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Let us now see how the times of the city of God run on from this point
among Abraham's descendants. In the time from the first year of
Isaac's life to the seventieth, when his sons were born, the only
memorable thing is, that when he prayed God that his wife, who was
barren, might bear, and the Lord granted what he sought, and she
conceived, the twins leapt while still enclosed in her womb. And when
she was troubled by this struggle, and inquired of the Lord, she
received this answer: "Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner
of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall
overcome the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger."
The Apostle Paul would have us understand this as a great instance of
grace; for the children being not yet born, neither having done any
good or evil, the younger is chosen without any good desert and the
elder is rejected, when beyond doubt, as regards original sin, both
were alike, and as regards actual sin, neither had any. But the plan
of the work on hand does not permit me to speak more fully of this
matter now, and I have said much about it in other works. Only that
saying, "The elder shall serve the younger," is understood by our
writers, almost without exception, to mean that the elder people, the
Jews, shall serve the younger people, the Christians. And truly,
although this might seem to be fulfilled in the Idumean nation, which
was born of the elder (who had two names, being called both Esau and
Edom. whence the name Idumeans), because it was afterwards to be
overcome by the people which sprang from the younger, that is, by the
Israelites, and was to become subject to them; yet it is more
suitable to believe that, when it was said, "The one people shall
overcome the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger,"
that prophecy meant some greater thing; and what is that except what is
evidently fulfilled in the Jews and Christians?
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