From Letter
XLV
.—
(For 373.)
Let
us all take up our
sacrifices, observing distribution to the poor, and enter into the holy
place, as it is written; ‘whither also our forerunner Jesus is
entered for us, having obtained eternal redemption
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.’…(
From the
same:
)…And this is a great proof that, whereas we were
strangers, we are called friends; from being formerly aliens, we are
become fellow-citizens with the saints, and are called children of the
Jerusalem which is above, whereof that which Solomon built was a type.
For if Moses made all things according to the pattern shewed him in the
mount, it is clear that the service performed in the tabernacle was a
type of the heavenly mysteries, whereto the Lord, desirous that we
should enter, prepared for us the new and abiding way. And as all the
old things were a type of the new, so the festival that now is, is a
type of the joy which is above, to which coming with psalms and
spiritual songs, let us begin the fasts
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.
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Heb. vi. 20
; ix.
12.
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This
fragment is the latest writing of Athanasius that we
possess.