Chapter 57 [XXXV.]—Turn to Neither Hand.

Let us hold fast, then, the confession of this faith, without faltering or failure. One alone is there who was born without sin, in the likeness of sinful flesh, who lived without sin amid the sins of others, and who died without sin on account of our sins. “Let us turn neither to the right hand nor to the left.”432    Prov. iv. 27. For to turn to the right hand is to deceive oneself, by saying that we are without sin; and to turn to the left is to surrender oneself to one’s sins with a sort of impunity, in I know not how perverse and depraved a recklessness. “God indeed knoweth the ways on the right hand,”433    Same verse [in the Latin and Septuagint; the clause does not occur in the Hebrew]. even He who alone is without sin, and is able to blot out our sins; “but the ways on the left hand are perverse,”434    [See the last note.] in friendship with sins. Of such inflexibility were those youths of twenty years,435    Num. xiv. 29, 31. who foretokened in figure God’s new people; they entered the land of promise; they, it is said, turned neither to the right hand nor to the left.436    Josh. xxiii. 6, 8. Now this age of twenty is not to be compared with the age of children’s innocence, but if I mistake not, this number is the shadow and echo of a mystery. For the Old Testament has its excellence in the five books of Moses, while the New Testament is most refulgent in the authority of the four Gospels. These numbers, when multiplied together, reach to the number twenty: four times five, or five times four, are twenty. Such a people (as I have already said), instructed in the kingdom of heaven by the two Testaments—the Old and the New—turning neither to the right hand, in a proud assumption of righteousness, nor to the left hand, in a reckless delight in sin, shall enter into the land of promise, where we shall have no longer either to pray that sins may be forgiven to us, or to fear that they may be punished in us, having been freed from them all by that Redeemer, who, not being “sold under sin,”437    Rom. vii. 14. “hath redeemed Israel out of all his iniquities,”438    Ps. xxv. 22. whether committed in the actual life, or derived from the original transgression.

CAPUT XXXV.

57. Non declinandum in dextram aut in sinistram. Teneamus ergo indeclinabilem fidei confessionem. Solus unus est qui sine peccato natus est in similitudine carnis peccati, sine peccato vixit inter aliena peccata, sine peccato mortuus est propter nostra peccata. Non declinemus in dextram aut in sinistram. In dexteram enim declinare, est se ipsum decipere dicendo se esse sine peccato: in sinistram autem, per nescio quam perversam et pravam securitatem se tanquam impune dare peccatis. Vias enim quae a dextris sunt novit Dominus, qui solus sine peccato est, et nostra potest delere peccata; perversae autem sunt quae a sinistris (Prov. IV, 27), amicitiae cum peccatis. Tales etiam illi viginti annorum adolescentuli figuram novi populi praemiserunt, qui in terram promissionis intrarunt, qui nec in dexteram nec in sinistram dicti sunt declinasse . Non enim viginti annorum aetas comparanda est innocentiae parvulorum: sed, ni fallor, hic numerus mysticum aliquid adumbrat et resonat. Vetus enim Testamentum in quinque Moysi libris excellit, Novum autem quatuor Evangeliorum auctoritate praefulget; qui numeri per se multiplicati ad vicenum perveniunt: quater enim quini, vel quinquies quaterni, viginti sunt. Talis populus, ut praedixi, eruditus in regno coelorum per duo Testamenta, Vetus et Novum, non declinans in dexteram superba praesumptione justitiae, neque in sinistram secura delectatione peccati , in terram promissionis intrabit: ubi jam peccata ulterius nec nobis donanda optemus, nec in nobis punienda timeamus, ab illo Redemptore liberati, qui non venumdatus sub peccato, redemit Israel ab omnibus iniquitatibus ejus, sive propria cujusquam vita commissis, sive originaliter tractis.