Similitude First.244
As in This World We Have No Abiding City, We Ought to Seek One to Come.
He says to me, “You know that you who are the servants of God dwell in a strange land;
for your city is far away from this one.245 If, then,” he continues, “you know your city in
which you are to dwell, why do ye here provide lands, and make expensive preparations,
and accumulate dwellings and useless buildings? He who makes such preparations for this
city cannot return again to his own. Oh foolish, and unstable, and miserable man! Dost thou
not understand that all these things belong to another, and are under the power of another?
For the Lord of this city will say, ‘I do not wish thee to dwell in my city; but depart from this
city, because thou obeyest not my laws.’ Thou, therefore, although having fields and houses,
and many other things, when cast out by him, what wilt thou do with thy land, and house,
and other possessions which thou hast gathered to thyself? For the Lord of this country
justly says to thee, ‘Either obey my laws or depart from my dominion.’ What, then, dost
thou intend to do, having a law in thine own city, on account of thy lands, and the rest of
thy possessions?246 Thou shalt altogether deny thy law, and walk according to the law of
this city. See lest it be to thy hurt to deny thy law;247 for if thou shalt desire to return to thy
city, thou wilt not be received, because thou hast denied the law of thy city, but wilt be ex-
244 [We have seen in Justin and Irenæus what seem to us an overstrained allegorizing, and more will be
encountered in Origen. On this whole subject, however, as it struck the Oriental and primitive instincts, take
the following very illustrative remarks, attributed to Hartley of Winwich:— “Nature, in its proper order, is the
book of God, and exhibits spiritual things in material forms. The knowledge of correspondences being so little
understood, is one main cause of the obscurity of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, which were chiefly written
by the rules of this science: and not Scripture alone, but man, also, as an image of the spiritual and natural worlds,
contains in himself the correspondences of both: of the former, in his interior, and of the latter in his exterior
or bodily, part, and so is called the microcosm, or little world.” Such texts as Heb. ix. 24, 1 Cor. ii. 13, 14, go far
to explain to us the childlike faith of the Fathers. See note on Leighton’s St. Peter, p. 238, vol. iii. Ed. Of William
West, B.A. 1870.]
245 [Heb. xiii. 14 is the text of this very beautiful chapter. But he original Greek of Phil. iii. 20 seems, also, to
be in the author’s mind. St. Paul addressed it to the church of a Roman “colony,” whose citizenship was not
Macedonian but Roman: hence its beautiful propriety.]
246 This sentence may be also rendered thus, giving ἕνεκεν the meaning of “as regards,” “respecting”—a
usual enough signification: “What then do you intend to do, as you have a law in your own city regarding your
lands and the rest of your possessions?” The Vatican punctuates the passage so that it runs as follows: “What
then will you do, who have a law in your own city? Will you, on account of your land, or any other of your pre-
parations, be able to deny your law?” The Vatican also omits several clauses that are in the Greek, down to “for
if thou shalt deny, and shalt desire to return,” etc.
247 See … law, omitted in Lips. [The θρησκεία of Jas. i. 27.]
Similitude First. As in This World We Have No Abiding City, We Ought to Seek One to Come.
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Similitude First. As in This World We Have No Abiding City, We Ought to…