Chapter 7.—In
What Manner We are Gathered from Many into One Through One
Mediator.
11. This mystery, this sacrifice,
this priest, this God, before He was sent and came, being made of a
woman—of Him, all those things which appeared to our fathers in a
sacred and mystical way by angelical miracles, or which were done
by the fathers themselves, were similitudes; in order that every
creature by its acts might speak in some way of that One who was to
be, in whom there was to be salvation in the recovery of all from
death. For because by the wickedness of ungodliness we had recoiled
and fallen away in discord from the one true and supreme God, and
had in many things become vain, being distracted through many
things and cleaving fast to many things; it was needful, by the
decree and command of God in His mercy, that those same many things
should join in proclaiming the One that should come, and that One
should come so proclaimed by these many things, and that these many
things should join in witnessing that this One had come; and that
so, freed from the burden of these many things, we should come to
that One, and dead as we were in our souls by many sins, and
destined to die in the flesh on account of sin, that we should love
that One who, without sin, died in the flesh for us; and by
believing in Him now raised again, and by rising again with Him in
the spirit through faith, that we should be justified by being made
one in the one righteous One; and that we should not despair of our
own resurrection in the flesh itself, when we consider that the one
Head had gone before us the many members; in whom, being now
cleansed through faith, and then renewed by sight, and through Him
as mediator reconciled to God, we are to cleave to the One, to
feast upon the One, to continue one.