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BUT I suppose you excuse the degradation offered to the Lord by means
of a subordinate honour, by the words "as the image of the secret God." By
the fact that you term Him an image you compare Him to man's estate. In
speaking of Him as the image of the secret God, you detract from the honour
plainly due to Him. For "God," says David, "shall plainly come; our God,
and shall not keep silence." And He surely came and did not keep
silence, who before that He in His own person uttered anything after His
birth, made known His advent by both earthly and heavenly witnesses alike,
while the star points Him out, the magi adore Him, and angels declare Him.
What more do you want? His voice was yet silent on earth, and His glory was
already crying aloud in heaven. Do you say then that God was and is secret
in Him? But this was not the announcement of the Prophets, of the
Patriarchs, aye and of the whole Law. For they did not say that He would be
secret, whose coming they all foretold. You err in your wretched blindness,
seeking grounds for blasphemy and not finding them. You say that He was
secret even after His advent. I maintain that He was not secret even
before His advent. For did the mystery of God to be born of a Virgin escape
the knowledge of that celebrated Patriarch on whom the vision of God
present with him conferred a title, whereby from the name of Supplanter he
rose to the name of Israel? Who, when from the struggle with the man who
wrestled with him he understood the mystery of the Incarnation yet to come,
said, "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." What, I
pray you, had he seen, for him to believe that he had seen God? Did God
manifest Himself to him in the midst of thunder and lightning? or when the
heavens were opened, did the dazzling face of the Deity show itself to him?
Most certainly not: but rather on the contrary he saw a man and
acknowledged a God. O truly worthy of the name he received, as with the
eyes of the soul rather than of the body he earned the honour of a title
given by God! He saw a human form wrestling with him, and declared that he
saw God. He certainly knew that human form was indeed God: for in that form
in which God then appeared, in the selfsame form He was in very truth
afterwards to come. Although why should we be surprised that so great a
patriarch unhesitatingly believed what God Himself so plainly showed in His
own Person to him, when he said, "I have seen God face to face and my life
is preserved." How did God show to him so much of the presence of Deity,
that he could say that the face of God was shown to him? For it seems that
only a man had appeared to him, whom he had actually beaten in the
struggle. But God was certainly bringing this about by precursory signs,
that there might not be any one to disbelieve that God was born of man,
when already long before the Patriarch had seen God in human form.
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