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13. Now he is in bondage to a sign who uses, or pays homage to,
any significant object without knowing what it signifies: he, on the
other hand, who either uses or honors a useful sign divinely
appointed, whose force and significance he understands, does not honor
the sign which is seen and temporal, but that to which all such signs
refer. Now such a man is spiritual and free even at the time of his
bondage, when it is not yet expedient to reveal to carnal minds those
signs by subjection to which their carnality is to be overcome. To
this class of spiritual persons belonged the patriarchs and the
prophets, and all those among the people of Israel through whose
instrumentality the Holy Spirit ministered unto us the aids and
consolations of the Scriptures. But at the present time, after that
the proof of our liberty has shone forth so clearly in the resurrection
of our Lord, we are not oppressed with the heavy burden of attending
even to those signs which we now understand, but our Lord Himself,
and apostolic practice, have handed down to us a few rites in place of
many, and these at once very easy to perform, most majestic in their
significance, and most sacred in the observance; such, for example,
as the sacrament of baptism, and the celebration of the body and blood
of the Lord. And as soon as any one looks upon these observances he
knows to what they refer, and so reveres them not in carnal bondage,
but in spiritual freedom. Now, as to follow the letter, and to take
signs for the things that are signified by them, is a mark of weakness
and bondage; so to interpret signs wrongly is the result of being
misled by error. He, however, who does not understand what a sign
signifies, but yet knows that it is a sign, is not in bondage. And
it is better even to be in bondage to unknown but useful signs than, by
interpreting them wrongly, to draw the neck from under the yoke of
bondage only to insert it in the coils of error.
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