Chapter XVIII.—Concerning the Centurion’s Faith. The Raising of the Widow’s Son. John Baptist, and His Message to Christ; And the Woman Who Was a Sinner. Proofs Extracted from All of the Relation of Christ to the Creator.

Likewise, when extolling the centurion’s faith, how incredible a thing it is, that He should confess that He had “found so great a faith not even in Israel,”1816 to whom Israel’s faith was in no way interesting!1817 But not from the fact (here stated by Christ)1818 could it have been of any interest to Him to approve and compare what was hitherto crude, nay, I might say, hitherto naught. Why, however, might He not have used the example of faith in another1819 god? Because, if He had done so, He would have said that no such faith had ever had existence in Israel; but as the case stands,1820 He intimates that He ought to have found so great a faith in Israel, inasmuch as He had indeed come for the purpose of finding it, being in truth the God and Christ of Israel, and had now stigmatized1821 it, only as one who would enforce and uphold it. If, indeed, He had been its antagonist,1822 He would have preferred finding it to be such faith,1823 having come to weaken and destroy it rather than to approve of it. He raised also the widow’s son from death.1824 This was not a strange miracle.1825 The Creator’s prophets had wrought such; then why not His Son much rather? Now, so evidently had the Lord Christ introduced no other god for the working of so momentous a miracle as this, that all who were present gave glory to the Creator, saying: “A great prophet is risen up among us, and God hath visited His people.”1826 What God?  He, of course, whose people they were, and from whom had come their prophets. But if they glorified the Creator, and Christ (on hearing them, and knowing their meaning) refrained from correcting them even in their very act of invoking1827 the Creator in that vast manifestation of His glory in this raising of the dead, undoubtedly He either announced no other God but Him, whom He thus permitted to be honoured in His own beneficent acts and miracles, or else how happens it that He quietly permitted these persons to remain so long in their error, especially as He came for the very purpose to cure them of their error? But John is offended1828 when he hears of the miracles of Christ, as of an alien god.1829 Well, I on my side1830 will first explain the reason of his offence, that I may the more easily explode the scandal1831 of our heretic. Now, that the very Lord Himself of all might, the Word and Spirit of the Father,1832 was operating and preaching on earth, it was necessary that the portion of the Holy Spirit which, in the form of the prophetic gift,1833 had been through John preparing the ways of the Lord, should now depart from John,1834 and return back again of course to the Lord, as to its all-embracing original.1835 Therefore John, being now an ordinary person, and only one of the many,1836 was offended indeed as a man, but not because he expected or thought of another Christ as teaching or doing nothing new, for he was not even expecting such a one.1837 Nobody will entertain doubts about any one whom (since he knows him not to exist) he has no expectation or thought of. Now John was quite sure that there was no other God but the Creator, even as a Jew, especially as a prophet.1838 Whatever doubt he felt was evidently rather1839 entertained about Him1840 whom he knew indeed to exist but knew not whether He were the very Christ.  With this fear, therefore, even John asks the question, “Art thou He that should come, or look we for another?”1841—simply inquiring whether He was come as He whom he was looking for. “Art thou He that should come?” i.e. Art thou the coming One? “or look we for another?” i.e. Is He whom we are expecting some other than Thou, if Thou art not He whom we expect to come? For he was supposing,1842 as all men then thought, from the similarity of the miraculous evidences,1843 that a prophet might possibly have been meanwhile sent, from whom the Lord Himself, whose coming was then expected, was different, and to whom He was superior.1844 And there lay John’s difficulty.1845 He was in doubt whether He was actually come whom all men were looking for; whom, moreover, they ought to have recognised by His predicted works, even as the Lord sent word to John, that it was by means of these very works that He was to be recognised.1846 Now, inasmuch as these predictions evidently related to the Creator’s Christ—as we have proved in the examination of each of them—it was perverse enough, if he gave himself out to be not the Christ of the Creator, and rested the proof of his statement on those very evidences whereby he was urging his claims to be received as the Creator’s Christ. Far greater still is his perverseness when, not being the Christ of John,1847 he yet bestows on John his testimony, affirming him to be a prophet, nay more, his messenger,1848 applying to him the Scripture, “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.”1849 He graciously1850 adduced the prophecy in the superior sense of the alternative mentioned by the perplexed John, in order that, by affirming that His own precursor was already come in the person of John, He might quench the doubt1851 which lurked in his question: “Art thou He that should come, or look we for another?”  Now that the forerunner had fulfilled his mission, and the way of the Lord was prepared, He ought now to be acknowledged as that (Christ) for whom the forerunner had made ready the way. That forerunner was indeed “greater than all of women born;”1852 but for all that, He who was least in the kingdom of God1853 was not subject to him;1854 as if the kingdom in which the least person was greater than John belonged to one God, while John, who was greater than all of women born, belonged himself to another God. For whether He speaks of any “least person” by reason of his humble position, or of Himself, as being thought to be less than John—since all were running into the wilderness after John rather than after Christ (“What went ye out into the wilderness to see?”1855)—the Creator has equal right1856 to claim as His own both John, greater than any born of women, and Christ, or every “least person in the kingdom of heaven,” who was destined to be greater than John in that kingdom, although equally pertaining to the Creator, and who would be so much greater than the prophet,1857 because he would not have been offended at Christ, an infirmity which then lessened the greatness of John. We have already spoken of the forgiveness1858 of sins. The behaviour of “the woman which was a sinner,” when she covered the Lord’s feet with her kisses, bathed them with her tears, wiped them with the hairs of her head, anointed them with ointment,1859 produced an evidence that what she handled was not an empty phantom,1860 but a really solid body, and that her repentance as a sinner deserved forgiveness according to the mind of the Creator, who is accustomed to prefer mercy to sacrifice.1861 But even if the stimulus of her repentance proceeded from her faith, she heard her justification by faith through her repentance pronounced in the words, “Thy faith hath saved thee,” by Him who had declared by Habakkuk, “The just shall live by his faith.”1862

CAPUT XVIII.

Proinde extollenda fide Centurionis (Luc. VII), incredibile si is professus est talem se fidem nec in 0401CIsraele invenisse, ad quem non pertinebat fides Israelis. Sed nec exinde pertinere poterat adhuc cruda ut probaretur vel compararetur, ne dixerim adhuc nulla. Sed cur non licuerit illi alienae fidei exemplo uti? Quoniam si ita esset, dixisset talem fidem nec in Israele umquam fuisse; caeterum, dicens talem fidem debuisse inveniri in Israele; quique ad hoc venisset, ut eam inveniret, Deus scilicet et Christus Israelis, quam non sugillasset, nisi exactor et sectator ejus. Aemulus vero etiam maluisset eam talem inventam, ad quam infirmandam et destruendam magis venerat, non ad comprobandam. Resuscitavit et mortuum filium viduae, non novum documentum. Hoc et prophetae Creatoris ediderant, quanto magis Filius? Adeo autem in illud usque momenti, nullum alium Dominus Christus intulerat, ut omnes illic 0402A Creatori gloriam retulerint dicentes: Magnus prophetes prodiit in nobis, et respexit Deus populum suum. Quis Deus? Utique cujus populus, et a quo prophetae. Quod si illi quidem Creatorem glorificabant, Christus vero et audiens et sciens non corrigebat, et quidem in tanto documento mortui resuscitati Creatorem adhuc orantes, sine dubio aut non alium circumferebat Deum, quam quem in suis beneficiis atque virtutibus honorari sustinebat: aut quale est ut illos tam diu errantes sustineret, ad hoc veniens, ut errori eorum mederetur! Sed scandalizatur Joannesauditis virtutibus Christi, ut alterius. At ego rationem scandali prius expediam, quo facilius haeretici scandalum explodam. Ipso jam Domino virtutum Sermone et Spiritu Patris operante in terris, et praedicante, 0402B necesse erat portionem Spiritus Sancti, quae ex forma prophetici moduli in Joanne egerat praeparaturam viarum Dominicarum , abscedere jam ab Joanne redactam scilicet in Dominum, ut in massalem suam summam. Itaque Joannes communis jam homo, et unus jam de turba, scandalizabatur quidem qua homo, sed non qua alium Christum sperans vel intelligens, qui neque eumdem speraret, ut nihil novi docentem vel operantem. Nemo haesitabit de aliquo, quem dum scit non esse, nec sperat, nec intelligit. Joannes autem certus erat neminem Deum praeter Creatorem, vel qua judaeus, etiam prophetes plane facilius quasi haesitavit de eo quem quum sciat esse, an ipse sit, nesciat. Hoc igitur metu et Joannes: Tu es, inquit, qui venis, an alium expectamus0402C ? simpliciter inquirens, an ipse venisset quem exspectabat. Tu es qui venis; id est , qui venturus es, an alium expectamus? id est, an alius est quem exspectamus, si non tu es quem venturum exspectamus? Sperabat enim, sicut omnes opinabantur ex similitudine documentorum, potuisse et prophetam interim missum esse, a quo alius esset, id est major, ipse scilicet Dominus, qui venturus exspectabatur. Atque adeo hoc erat Joannis scandalum, quod dubitabat ipsum venisse quem exspectabant, quem et praedicatis operationibus agnovisse debuerant, ut Dominus, per easdem operationes agnoscendum se nuntiaverit Joanni. Quae cum constet praedicata in Christum Creatoris, sicut ad singula ostendimus, satis perversum, ut Christus non Creatoris per ea se renuntiarit intelligendum, per quae magis Christum 0403A Creatoris agnosci compellebat. Multo perversius, si et testimonium Joanni perhibet non Joannis Christus, propheten eum confirmans, imo et supra, ut angelum, ingerens etiam scriptum super illo: Ecce ego mitto angelum meum ante faciem tuam, qui praeparabit viam tuam; eleganter ad superiorem sensum scandalizati Joannis commemorans prophetiam, ut, confirmans praecursorem Joannem jam advenisse, extingueret scrupulum interrogationis illius, Tu es qui venis, an alium exspectamus? Praecursore enim jam functo officio, praeparata via Domini, ipse erat intelligendus, cui praecursor ministraverat, Major quidem omnibus natis mulierum, sed non ideo subjecto ei, qui minor fuerit in regno Dei; quasi alterius sit Dei regnum, in quo modicus quis major erit Joanne; alterius 0403B Joannes, qui omnibus natis mulierum major sit. Sive enim de quocumque dicit modico per humilitatem, sive de semetipso, quia minor Joanne habebatur, omnibus scilicet in solitudinem concurrentibus ad Joannem potius quam ad Christum, Quid existis videre in solitudinem? tantumdem et Creatori competit, et Joannem ipsius esse majorem natis mulierum, et Christum vel quemque modicum, qui major Joanne futurus sit in regno aeque Creatoris, et qui sit major tanto propheta, qui non fuerit scandalizatus in Christum, quod tunc Joannem minuit. Diximus de remissa peccatorum . Illius autem peccatricis foeminae argumentum eo pertinebit, ut cum pedes Domini osculis figeret, lacrymis inundaret, crinibus detergeret, unguento perduceret, solidi corporis veritatem, 0403C non phantasma inane tractaverit. Et ut peccatricis poenitentia, secundum Creatorem meruerit, veniam praeponere solitum sacrificio. Sed et si poenitentiae stimulus ex fide acciderat, per poenitentiam ex fide justificatam, ab eo audiit: Fides tua te salvam fecit: qui per Habacuc (Habac., II, 4) pronuntiarat: Justus ex fide sua vivet .