VII.
1857
1. He who rescued from the lowest hell the
first-formed man of earth when he was lost and bound with the chains of
death; He who came down from above, and raised the earthy on
high;
1858
He who became
the evangelist of the dead, and the redeemer of the souls, and the
resurrection of the buried,—He was constituted the helper of
vanquished man, being made like him Himself, (so that) the first-born
Word acquainted Himself with the first-formed Adam in the Virgin; He
who is spiritual sought out the earthy in the womb; He who is the
ever-living One sought out him who, through disobedience, is subject to
death; He who is heavenly called the terrene to the things that are
above; He who is the nobly-born sought, by means of His own subjection,
to declare the slave free; He transformed the man into adamant who was
dissolved into dust and made the food of the serpent, and declared Him
who hung on the tree to be Lord over the conqueror, and thus through
the tree He is found victor.
2. For they who know not now the Son of God
incarnate, shall know in Him who comes as Judge in glory, Him who is
now despised in the body of His humiliation.
3. And the apostles, when they came to the
sepulchre on the third day, did not find the body of Jesus; just as the
children of Israel went up the mount and sought for the tomb of Moses,
but did not find it.
1857
From a Discourse on the “Great Song” [i.e.,
Ps. xc
. See Bunsen, i. p. 285. Some
suppose it
Ps.
cxix
.] In Theodoret,
Dial. II. pp. 88, 89.
1858
τὸν
κάτω εἰς τὰ
ἄνω
. [See p. 238, note 17,
supra
.]