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11. This mystery, this sacrifice, this priest, this God, before
He was sent and came, being made of a woman of Him, all those things
which appeared to our fathers in a sacred and mystical way by angelical
miracles, or which were done by the fathers themselves, were
similitudes; in order that every creature by its acts might speak in
some way of that One who was to be, in whom there was to be salvation
in the recovery of all from death. For because by the wickedness of
ungodliness we had recoiled and fallen away in discord from the one true
and supreme God, and had in many things become vain, being distracted
through many things and cleaving fast to many things; it was needful,
by the decree and command of God in His mercy, that those same many
things should join in proclaiming the One that should come, and that
One should come so proclaimed by these many things, and that these
many things should join in witnessing that this One had come; and that
so, freed from the burden of these many things, we should come to that
One, and dead as we were in our souls by many sins, and destined to
die in the flesh on account of sin, that we should love that One who,
without sin, died in the flesh for us; and by believing in Him now
raised again, and by rising again with Him in the spirit through
faith, that we should be justified by being made one in the one
righteous One; and that we should not despair of our own resurrection
in the flesh itself, when we consider that the one Head had gone
before us the many members; in whom, being now cleansed through
faith, and then renewed by sight, and through Him as mediator
reconciled to God, we are to cleave to the One, to feast upon the
One, to continue one.
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