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Not unfitly is it commonly understood to be prefigured from the person
of our Lord Jesus Christ, that His "back parts" are to be taken
to be His flesh, in which He was born of the Virgin, and died, and
rose again; whether they are called back parts on account of the
posteriority of mortality, or because it was almost in the end of the
world, that is, at a late period, that He deigned to take it: but
that His "face" was that form of God, in which He "thought it not
robbery to be equal with God," which no one certainly can see and
live; whether because after this life, in which we are absent from the
Lord, and where the corruptible body presseth down the soul, we shall
see "face to facet," as the apostle says (for it is said in the
Psalms, of this life, "Verily every man living is altogether
vanity;" and again, "For in Thy sight shall no man living be
justified;" and in this life also, according to John, "It doth
not yet appear what we shall be, but we know," he says, "that when
He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He
is," which he certainly intended to be understood as after this life,
when we shall have paid the debt of death, and shall have received the
promise of the resurrection); or whether that even now, in whatever
degree we spiritually understand the wisdom of God, by which all
things were made, in that same degree we die to carnal affections, so
that, considering this world dead to us, we also ourselves die to this
world, and say what the apostle says, "The world is crucified unto
me, and I unto the world." For it was of this death that he also
says, "Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ, why as though living
in the world are ye subject to ordinances?" Not therefore without
cause will no one be able to see the "face," that is, the
manifestation itself of the wisdom of God, and live. For it is this
very appearance, for the contemplation of which every one sighs who
strives to love God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and
with all his mind; to the contemplation of which, he who Loves his
neighbor, too, as himself builds up his neighbor also as far as he
may; on which two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. And
this is signified also in Moses himself. For when he had said, on
account of the love of God with which he was specially inflamed, "If
I have found grace in thy sight, show me now Thyself plainly, that
I may find grace in Thy sight;" he immediately subjoined, on
account of the love also of his neighbor, "And that I may know that
this nation is Thy people." It is therefore that "appearance"
which hurries away every rational soul with the desire of it, and the
more ardently the more pure that soul is; and it is the more pure the
more it rises to spiritual things; and it rises the more to spiritual
things the more it dies to carnal things. But whilst we are absent
from the Lord, and walk by faith, not by sight, we ought to see the
"back parts" of Christ, that is His flesh, by that very faith,
that is, standing on the solid foundation of faith, which the rock
signifies, and beholding it from such a safe watch-tower, namely in
the Catholic Church, of which it is said, "And upon this rock I
will build my Church." For so much the more certainly we love that
face of Christ, which we earnestly desire to see, as we recognize in
His back parts how much first Christ loved us.
29. But in the flesh itself, the faith in His resurrection saves
and justifies us. For, "If thou shalt believe," he says, "in
thine heart, that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be
saved;" and again, "Who was delivered," he says, "for our
offenses, and was raised again for our justification." So that the
reward of our faith is the resurrection of the body of our Lord. For
even His enemies believe that that flesh died on the cross of His
passion, but they do not believe it to have risen again. Which we
believing most firmly, gaze upon it as from the solidity of a rock:
whence we wait with certain hope for the adoption, to wit, the
redemption of our body; because we hope for that in the members of
Christ, that is, in ourselves, which by a sound faith we acknowledge
to be perfect in Him as in our Head. Thence it is that He would not
have His back parts seen, unless as He passed by, that His
resurrection may be believed. For that which is Pascha in Hebrew,
is translated Passover. Whence John the Evangelist also says,
"Before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour
was come, that He should pass out of this world unto the Father."
30. But they who believe this, but believe it not in the Catholic
Church, but in some schism or in heresy, do not see the back parts of
the Lord from "the place that is by Him." For what does that mean
which the Lord says, "Behold, there is a place by me, and thou
shalt stand upon a rock?" What earthly place is "by" the Lord,
unless that is "by Him" which touches Him spiritually? For what
place is not "by" the Lord, who "reacheth from one end to another
mightily, and sweetly doth order all things," and of whom it is
said, "Heaven is His throne, and earth is His footstool;" and
who said, "Where is the house that ye build unto me, and where is
the place of my rest? For has not my hand made all those things?"
But manifestly the Catholic Church itself is understood to be "the
place by Him," wherein one stands upon a rock, where he healthfully
sees the "Pascha Domini," that is, the "Passing by" of the
Lord, and His back parts, that is, His body, who believes in His
resurrection. "And thou shalt stand," He says, "upon a rock
while my glory passeth by." For in reality, immediately after the
majesty of the Lord had passed by in the glorification of the Lord,
in which He rose again and ascended to the Father, we stood firm upon
the rock. And Peter himself then stood firm, so that he preached
Him with confidence, whom, before he stood firm, he had thrice from
fear denied; although, indeed, already before placed in
predestination upon the watch-tower of the rock, but with the hand of
the Lord still held over him that he might not see. For he was to see
His back parts, and the Lord had not yet "passed by," namely,
from death to life; He had not yet been glorified by the
resurrection.
31. For as to that, too, which follows in Exodus, "I will
cover thee with mine hand while I pass by, and I will take away my
hand and thou shalt see my back parts;" many Israelites, of whom
Moses was then a figure, believed in the Lord after His
resurrection, as if His hand had been taken off from their eyes, and
they now saw His back parts. And hence the evangelist also mentions
that prophesy of Isaiah, "Make the heart of this people fat, and
make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes." Lastly, in the
Psalm, that is not unreasonably understood to be said in their
person, "For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me." "By
day," perhaps, when He performed manifest miracles, yet was not
acknowledged by them; but "by night," when He died in suffering,
when they thought still more certainly that, like any one among men,
He was cut off and brought to an end. But since, when He had
already passed by, so that His back parts were seen, upon the
preaching to them by the Apostle Peter that it behoved Christ to
suffer and rise again, they were pricked in their hearts with the grief
of repentance, that that might come to pass among the baptized which is
said in the beginning of that Psalm, "Blessed are they whose
transgressions are forgiven, and whose sins are covered;" therefore,
after it had been said, "Thy hand is heavy upon me," the Lord, as
it were, passing by, so that now He removed His hand, and His back
parts were seen, there follows the voice of one who grieves and
confesses and receives remission of sins by faith in the resurrection of
the Lord: "My moisture," he says, "is turned into the drought of
summer. I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I
not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord,
and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin."
For we ought not to be so wrapped up in the darkness of the flesh, as
to think the face indeed of God to be invisible, but His back
visible, since both appeared visibly in the form of a servant; but far
be it from us to think anything of the kind in the form of God; far be
it from us to think that the Word of God and the Wisdom of God has a
face on one side, and on the other a back, as a human body has, or is
at all changed either in place or time by any appearance or motion.
35. Wherefore, if in those words which were spoken in Exodus, and
in all those corporeal appearances, the Lord Jesus Christ was
manifested; or if in some cases Christ was manifested, as the
consideration of this passage persuades us, in others the Holy
Spirit, as that which we have said above admonishes us; at any rate
no such result follows, as that God the Father never appeared in any
such form to the Fathers. For many such appearances happened in those
times, without either the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit
being expressly named and designated in them; but yet with some
intimations given through certain very probable interpretations, so
that it would be too rash to say that God the Father never appeared by
any visible forms to the fathers or the prophets. For they gave birth
to this opinion who were not able to understand in respect to the unity
of the Trinity such texts as, "Now unto the King eternal,
immortal, invisible, the only wise God;" and, "Whom no man hath
seen, nor can see." Which texts are understood by a sound faith in
that substance itself, the highest, and in the highest degree divine
and unchangeable, whereby both the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit is the one and only God. But those visions were wrought
through the changeable creature, made subject to the unchangeable
God, and did not manifest God properly as He is, but by intimations
such as suited the causes and times of the several circumstances.
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