Chapter XCII.—Unless the scriptures be understood through God’s great grace,
God will not appear to have taught always the same righteousness.
“Unless, therefore, a man by God’s great grace receives the power to understand what
has been said and done by the prophets, the appearance of being able to repeat the words
or the deeds will not profit him, if he cannot explain the argument of them. And will they
not assuredly appear contemptible to many, since they are related by those who understood
them not? For if one should wish to ask you why, since Enoch, Noah with his sons, and all
others in similar circumstances, who neither were circumcised nor kept the Sabbath, pleased
God, God demanded by other leaders, and by the giving of the law after the lapse of so many
generations, that those who lived between the times of Abraham and of Moses be justified
by circumcision, and that those who lived after Moses be justified by circumcision and the
other ordinances—to wit, the Sabbath, and sacrifices, and libations,543 and offerings; [God
will be slandered] unless you show, as I have already said, that God who foreknew was aware
that your nation would deserve expulsion from Jerusalem, and that none would be permitted
to enter into it. (For544 you are not distinguished in any other way than by the fleshly cir-
cumcision, as I remarked previously. For Abraham was declared by God to be righteous,
not on account of circumcision, but on account of faith. For before he was circumcised the
following statement was made regarding him: ‘Abraham believed God, and it was accounted
unto him for righteousness.’545 And we, therefore, in the uncircumcision of our flesh, be-
lieving God through Christ, and having that circumcision which is of advantage to us who
have acquired it —namely, that of the heart—we hope to appear righteous before and well-
pleasing to God: since already we have received His testimony through the words of the
prophets.) [And, further, God will be slandered unless you show] that you were commanded
to observe the Sabbath, and to present offerings, and that the Lord submitted to have a place
called by the name of God, in order that, as has been said, you might not become impious
and godless by worshipping idols and forgetting God, as indeed you do always appear to
have been. (Now, that God enjoined the ordinances of Sabbaths and offerings for these
reasons, I have proved in what I previously remarked; but for the sake of those who came
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to-day, I wish to repeat nearly the whole.) For if this is not the case, God will be slandered,546
as having no foreknowledge, and as not teaching all men to know and to do the same acts
of righteousness (for many generations of men appear to have existed before Moses); and
the Scripture is not true which affirms that ‘God is true and righteous, and all His ways are
543 Or, “ashes,” σποδῶν for σπονδῶν.
544 We have adopted the parenthesis inserted by Maranus. Langus would insert before it, τί ἕξετε ἀποκρίνασθαι;
“What will you have to answer?”
545 Gen. xv. 6.
546 We have supplied this phrase twice above.
Chapter XCII.—Unless the scriptures be understood through God’s great grace, God will not appear to have taught always the same righteousness.
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Chapter XCII.—Unless the scriptures be understood through God’s great grace,…