CHAPTER SEVEN: Of the Similarities and Differences between the Old and New Covenants (part 2 of 2)
“Their worm shall never die, and their fire shall never be extinguished.”
The other passage is in Daniel:
“At that time Michael the Archangel shall arise, who is appointed to guard the children of God; and there shall come a time of distress such as has never been since the world was created. Then all the people whose names are found written in the book shall be saved. And those who rest in the earth shall arise, some to eternal life and others to everlasting disgrace.”
As for the other two points—namely, that the ancient fathers possessed Christ as the pledge and assurance of the promises God had made to them, and that they placed all their confidence of blessing in him—I shall not labor greatly to prove them, because they are easy to understand and are not so greatly disputed.
We shall therefore conclude that the Old Testament, or the covenant God made with the people of Israel, was not confined merely to earthly things, but also contained certain promises of spiritual and eternal life, the hope of which was to be impressed upon the hearts of all who were truly joined to that covenant. This conclusion cannot be overthrown by any devices of the Devil.
Therefore, let this raging and pernicious opinion be far from us: that God set nothing before the Jews, or that they expected nothing from his hand, except to fill their stomachs, live amid carnal pleasures, abound in riches, be exalted in honor, possess numerous offspring, and enjoy other such things as worldly men desire.
For Jesus Christ promises his believers today no other kingdom of heaven than that in which they shall rest with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
“Many shall come from the east and the west and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.”
Saint Peter reminded the Jews of his day that they were heirs of evangelical grace because they were successors of the Prophets and were included in the covenant which God had anciently made with Israel.
“You are the children of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with our fathers.”
And lest this should be testified by words alone, the Lord also confirmed it by deed. At the very hour when Christ rose again, he made many of the saints partakers of his resurrection, and they were seen in Jerusalem.
“Many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and after his resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many.”
By this he gave a sure pledge that everything he had done or suffered to acquire salvation for mankind belonged no less to the believers of the Old Testament than to us.
Indeed, they possessed the same Spirit that we possess, by whom God regenerates his people unto eternal life. Since we see that God’s Spirit—who is like a seed of immortality within us, and for this reason is called the pledge of our inheritance—dwelt in them, how dare we deprive them of the inheritance of life?
A prudent person cannot sufficiently marvel that the Sadducees anciently fell into such great stupidity as to deny the resurrection and the immortality of souls, since both are so clearly demonstrated in Scripture.
We should be no less astonished by the brutish ignorance visible today among the whole Jewish people, in that they foolishly expect an earthly kingdom from Christ, had it not been foretold that such a punishment would come upon them for despising Jesus Christ and his gospel. For it was just that God should strike them with such blindness, since they extinguished the light presented to them and preferred darkness.
They therefore read Moses and continually meditate upon his writings, but the veil prevents them from beholding the light of his countenance. That veil shall always remain until they learn to refer Moses to Christ, from whom they now turn him away as much as they possibly can.
What then? someone will ask. Shall there remain no difference between the Old and New Testaments? And what shall we say to the many passages of Scripture which contrast them as things widely different?
I answer that I willingly accept all the differences which we find set forth in Scripture, provided that they detract nothing from the unity we have already established, as will be easy to see when we have treated them in order.
As far as I have been able to observe from a careful consideration of Scripture, there are four such differences, though if anyone wishes to add a fifth, I shall not object. I undertake to show that they all belong, and must be referred, to the different manner which God employed in administering his doctrine rather than to its substance. Thus nothing will prevent the promises of the Old and New Testaments from remaining alike, or Christ from being acknowledged as the sole foundation of both.
The first difference, then, is this: although God always willed his people to raise their understanding toward the heavenly inheritance and fix their hearts upon it, nevertheless, in order to sustain them more effectively in the hope of invisible things, he caused them to behold that inheritance under earthly benefits and gave them, as it were, some foretaste of it.
Now, having revealed the grace of the future life more clearly through the gospel, he directs our minds straight toward meditation upon it, without training us through inferior things as he did the Israelites. Those who do not consider this purpose of God imagine that the ancient people never rose any higher than to expect those things which belonged to bodily comfort.
They see that the land of Canaan is so frequently named as the supreme reward given to those who observed God’s Law. On the other hand, they see that God threatens the Jews with nothing more grievous than exterminating them from the land he had given them and scattering them among foreign nations. Finally, they see that nearly all the blessings and curses recited by Moses return to this same point.
From this they confidently conclude that God separated the Jews from other peoples not for their own benefit, but for ours, so that the Christian Church might possess an outward image in which to contemplate spiritual things. But since Scripture demonstrates that through all the earthly promises God made to them, he intended to lead them by the hand into the hope of his heavenly graces, failure to recognize this method reveals excessive dullness—indeed, sheer brutishness.
This, then, is the point we must debate with such people. They say that the land of Canaan, which the people of Israel regarded as their supreme blessedness, represents our heavenly inheritance. We maintain, on the contrary, that in the earthly possession they enjoyed, they beheld the future inheritance prepared for them in heaven.
This will be made clearer by the comparison Saint Paul gives in the Epistle to the Galatians. He compares the Jewish people to an heir who is still a little child and, being incapable of governing himself, remains under the authority of a guardian or tutor.
“As long as the heir is a child, he differs in nothing from a servant, though he is lord of all, but remains under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by his father.”
It is true that Saint Paul is principally treating the ceremonies there, but that does not prevent us from applying his statement to our present subject. We see, therefore, that the same inheritance was assigned to them as to us, but that they were not yet capable of enjoying it fully. The same Church existed among them as exists among us, but it was still in its childhood.
Therefore, the Lord maintained them under this tutelage: he did not give them the spiritual promises plainly, but instead presented them with an image and figure of them under earthly promises. Thus, when he received Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all their descendants into the hope of immortality, he promised them the land of Canaan as an inheritance—not so that their affections should rest there, but so that by beholding it they might be confirmed in the certain hope of the true inheritance prepared for them in heaven, which did not yet appear.
And lest they should be deceived, he also added a higher promise testifying that this earthly land was not the supreme and principal blessing he intended to bestow upon them. Thus, when Abraham received the promise that he would possess the land of Canaan, he did not stop at what he could see, but was raised upward by the accompanying promise:
“Abraham, I am your protector and your exceedingly great reward.”
We see that the ultimate end of his reward was placed in God, so that he should not expect a transitory reward from this world, but an incorruptible one in heaven. We see that possession of the land of Canaan was promised to him only on the condition that it should serve as a token of God’s goodwill and a figure of the heavenly inheritance.
Indeed, the statements of believers demonstrate that they understood it in this way. Thus David was prompted by God’s temporal blessings to meditate upon his supreme grace when he said:
“My heart and my flesh languish with desire to behold you, O Lord. The Lord is my inheritance forever.”
Again:
“The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and all my good.”
Again:
“I cried to the Lord, saying, ‘You are my hope and my inheritance in the land of the living.’”
Certainly, all who dare speak in this manner demonstrate that they rise above this world and all present things.
Nevertheless, the Prophets most frequently describe the blessedness of the coming age under the image and figure which they had received from God. According to this pattern we must understand those passages which say that the righteous shall inherit the land while the wicked shall be exterminated from it.
“The upright shall dwell in the land, but the wicked shall be cut off from it.”
Likewise, Jerusalem shall abound in riches and Zion in the abundance of every good thing. We understand that this does not properly belong to this mortal life, which is like a pilgrimage, nor did it belong to the earthly city of Jerusalem. Rather, it belongs to the true country of believers and to the heavenly city in which God has prepared blessing and life forever.
For this reason, the saints under the Old Testament esteemed this mortal life more highly than we ought to do today. Although they knew perfectly well that they were not to rest in it as their final end, nevertheless, because they also understood that God represented his grace to them through it in order to confirm them in hope according to their childhood, they regarded it with greater affection than they would have done had they considered it merely in itself.
Now, just as the Lord, by testifying to his goodwill toward believers through earthly benefits, represented the spiritual blessedness toward which they were to aspire, so, on the other hand, the bodily punishments he inflicted upon evildoers were signs of his future judgment upon the reprobate. Therefore, just as God’s benefits were then more visibly displayed in temporal things, so also were his acts of vengeance.
The ignorant, failing to consider this correspondence between the punishments and rewards of that time, marvel that there should appear to be such variation in God. Since anciently he was so quick and sudden in taking severe vengeance upon men immediately after they offended him, they wonder why now, as though he had moderated his anger, he punishes more gently and less frequently.
They come very close, for this reason, to imagining different gods of the Old and New Testaments.
But we shall easily free ourselves from every such difficulty if we remember the divine administration we have noted: during the time when God delivered his covenant to the people of Israel, he presented it in a somewhat veiled form.
He intended, on the one hand, to signify and represent the eternal blessedness he promised them under his earthly benefits, and, on the other, the horrible damnation awaiting the wicked under bodily punishments.
The second difference between the Old and New Testaments lies in their figures. While the truth was still absent, the Old Testament represented it through images and possessed the shadow in place of the body. The New Testament contains the truth present and the substance itself.
Nearly all the passages in which the Old Testament is contrasted with the New should be referred to this difference, although nowhere is the subject treated more fully than in the Epistle to the Hebrews. There the Apostle argues against those who believed that all religion would be destroyed if the ceremonies of Moses were abolished.
To refute this error, he first takes what the Prophet had said concerning the priesthood of Jesus Christ. Since the Father appointed him an eternal High Priest, it is certain that the Levitical priesthood, in which one priest succeeded another, has been abolished. He proves that this new priesthood is more excellent than the former because it was established by an oath.
He then adds that when the priesthood was thus transferred, the covenant was also changed. Moreover, he shows that this was necessary because the Law possessed such weakness that it could not lead anyone to perfection. He then explains what this weakness was: it possessed outward ordinances which could not perfect their observers with respect to the conscience, since the blood of brute beasts cannot blot out sins or acquire true holiness.
He therefore concludes that the Law contained a shadow of the good things to come, not the living presence which is given to us in the gospel.
Here we must consider the particular respect in which he compares the legal covenant with the evangelical covenant, and the office of Moses with that of Christ. For if this comparison concerned the substance of the promises, there would be a great contradiction between the two Testaments. But since we see that the Apostle is directing us elsewhere, we must follow his intention if we would rightly discover the truth.
Let us therefore set before us the covenant which God once made to endure forever. The fulfillment by which it is ratified and confirmed is Jesus Christ. While Christ still had to be awaited, the Lord ordained through Moses ceremonies which would serve as signs and representations of him.
This, then, was the matter in controversy: whether the ceremonies commanded in the Law had to cease in order to give place to Jesus Christ. Although these ceremonies were only incidental or accessory to the Old Testament, nevertheless, because they were the instruments by which God maintained his people in its doctrine, they bear its name, just as Scripture customarily attributes to the sacraments the names of the things they represent.
In short, therefore, the Old Testament here means the solemn manner by which the Lord’s covenant was confirmed to the Jews, consisting of sacrifices and other ceremonies. Because there is nothing firm or substantial in these if we do not pass beyond them, the Apostle maintains that they had to end and be abolished in order to give place to Jesus Christ, who is the guarantor and Mediator of a better covenant. Through this covenant eternal sanctification was once for all acquired for the elect, and the transgressions which remained under the Old Testament were abolished.
Or, if anyone prefers, we may define it in this manner: the Old Testament was the doctrine God gave to the Jewish people, wrapped in ceremonial observances which possessed neither efficacy nor permanence in themselves. For this reason it was temporary, because it remained, as it were, suspended until it was supported by its fulfillment and confirmed in its substance.
But it became new and eternal when it was confirmed and established in the blood of Christ. For this reason Christ called the cup which he gave his disciples at the Supper:
“The cup of the New Testament in my blood.”
He thereby indicated that when God’s covenant is sealed in his blood, its truth is fulfilled, and it thus becomes a new and eternal covenant.
From this it is evident in what sense Saint Paul says that the Jews were conducted to Christ by the elementary instruction of the Law before he was manifested in the flesh. He readily confesses that they were God’s children and heirs, but because they were still in their childhood, he says that they were placed under the care of a tutor.
“The Law was our tutor to lead us to Christ.”
For it was fitting that before the Sun of Righteousness had risen, there should not be such fullness of revealed light or such clear understanding.
The Lord therefore dispensed the light of his word to them in such a way that they still beheld it only from afar. Accordingly, when Saint Paul wished to describe this limited understanding, he used the language of childhood, saying that at that age the Lord instructed them through ceremonies, as by rudiments or elementary lessons suited to children, until Christ was manifested to increase the knowledge of his people and confirm them so that they should no longer remain in childhood.
This is the distinction Jesus Christ made when he said:
“The Law and the Prophets were until John the Baptist; since then the kingdom of God has been proclaimed.”
What did Moses and the Prophets teach in their time? They gave some taste and savor of the wisdom which was one day to be revealed, and showed it from afar. But when Jesus Christ could be pointed out with the finger, the kingdom of God was opened. For in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, by which we may ascend almost to the highest heaven.
Nor is this contradicted by the fact that scarcely one person could be found in the Christian Church worthy to be compared with Abraham in steadfastness of faith, or that the Prophets possessed such great understanding that it remains sufficient to illuminate the world today. For we are not considering here what graces our Lord conferred upon particular individuals, but the general order which he observed at that time.
This order appears even in the doctrine of the Prophets, although they possessed a singular privilege above others. For their preaching is obscure, as of something distant, and is enclosed within figures. Moreover, whatever revelations they received, because it was necessary for them to submit to the common tutelage of the whole people, they were numbered among the children like everyone else.
Finally, there was never in those days any understanding so clear that it did not in some measure savor of the obscurity of the age. This is why Jesus Christ said:
“Many kings and prophets desired to see the things you see and did not see them, and to hear the things you hear and did not hear them. Therefore, blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.”
Indeed, it was right that the presence of Jesus Christ should possess this privilege: to bring to the world a fuller understanding of the heavenly mysteries than had previously existed.
Let us now come to the third difference, which is taken from Jeremiah:
“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah—not according to the covenant which I made with your fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they broke and annulled it, although they were under my dominion.
“But the covenant which I shall make with the house of Israel shall be this: I will write my Law within them and engrave it upon their hearts, and I will be gracious to forgive their offenses. Then no one shall teach his neighbor, for they shall all know me, from the greatest to the least.”
From this passage Saint Paul took occasion to make his comparison between the Law and the gospel, calling the Law a doctrine of the letter, a ministry of death and condemnation written upon tablets of stone, but the gospel a spiritual doctrine of life and righteousness engraved upon the heart. He further says that the Law must be abolished, while the gospel shall remain forever.
Since Saint Paul’s intention was to explain the Prophet’s meaning, it will be sufficient to consider the words of one in order to understand both, although they differ somewhat from one another. For the Apostle speaks more severely of the Law than the Prophet does. He does this not by considering simply the nature of the Law itself, but because certain troublemakers, through their disordered zeal for the ceremonies, endeavored to obscure the brightness of the gospel. He was therefore compelled to discuss the Law in relation to their error and foolish attachment. We must note this as something distinctive in Saint Paul’s treatment.
As to the agreement between him and Jeremiah, because both contrast the Old Testament with the New, neither considers anything in the Law except what properly belongs to it.
For example, the Law contains here and there promises of God’s mercy. But because these are derived from another source, they are not taken into account when the nature of the Law itself is being considered. They attribute to the Law only the following: that it commands what is good and righteous; forbids every wickedness; promises a reward to those who observe righteousness; and threatens sinners with God’s vengeance, without possessing the power to change or correct the perversity naturally present in all men.
Let us now explain point by point the comparison made by the Apostle. According to him, the Old Testament is of the letter because it was proclaimed without the effective working of the Holy Spirit.
The New Testament is spiritual because the Lord has engraved it upon the hearts of his people. Therefore, the second contrast Saint Paul makes serves to explain the first. The Old Testament is deadly because it can do nothing but envelop the whole human race in the curse. The New is an instrument of life because, by delivering us from the curse, it restores us to God’s grace.
His next statement tends toward the same end. The first is a ministry of condemnation because it demonstrates that all Adam’s children are guilty of unrighteousness. The second is a ministry of righteousness because it reveals God’s mercy, in which we are justified.
The final part must be referred to the ceremonies. Because they were images of things not yet present, they necessarily vanished with time. But because the gospel contains the body itself, its permanence endures forever.
Jeremiah likewise calls the moral Law a weak and fragile covenant, but for another reason: because it was immediately broken and annulled through the ingratitude of the people. But since this violation arose from an external defect, it should not properly be attributed to the Law itself. The ceremonies, however, because they were abolished at Christ’s coming on account of their own weakness, contained within themselves the cause of their abolition.
Now, this difference between the letter and the Spirit must not be understood as though the Lord had anciently given his Law to the Jews without fruit or benefit, converting no one to himself. Rather, it is stated by way of comparison in order more greatly to magnify the abundance of grace which the Lord was pleased to display through the preaching of the gospel, thereby honoring the reign of his Christ.
For if we consider the multitude which he gathered from various nations through the preaching of his gospel and regenerated by his Spirit, we shall find that, by comparison, the number of those who received the doctrine of the Law with true affection of heart was so small that there is no comparison. Nevertheless, if we consider the people of Israel by themselves, without comparing them to the Christian Church, there were indeed many true believers among them.
The fourth difference depends upon and arises from the third. For Scripture calls the Old Testament a covenant of bondage because it produces fear and terror in men’s hearts, but the New Testament a covenant of liberty because it confirms them in security and confidence.
Saint Paul speaks in this manner in the Epistle to the Romans:
“You have not again received the spirit of bondage unto fear, but the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’”
This is also what the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews means when he says that believers have not now come to the visible mountain of Sinai, where nothing appeared but fire, thunder, tempest, and lightning, so that the people of Israel saw nothing there which did not cause them horror and terror, and even Moses himself was afraid.
Nor does God speak to them with a terrifying voice as he did then. Rather:
“You have come to the heavenly mountain of Zion and to Jerusalem, the city of the living God, and to the company of angels.”
The statement briefly touched upon in the passage cited from Romans is explained more fully in the Epistle to the Galatians, where Saint Paul makes an allegory from Abraham’s two sons.
Hagar, the bondwoman, represents Mount Sinai, where the people of Israel received the Law. Sarah, the free woman, represents Jerusalem, from which the gospel proceeds. Just as Hagar’s offspring are enslaved and cannot receive the inheritance, while Sarah’s offspring are free and destined to inherit, so the Law can produce nothing in us but bondage, while the gospel alone regenerates us unto liberty.
The sum is this: the Old Testament was given to terrify consciences, while through the New joy and gladness are given to them. The first held consciences bound and confined beneath the yoke of bondage; the second delivers and sets them free.
If anyone objects by appealing to the fathers of the Old Testament, arguing that since they possessed the same Spirit of faith as we do, it follows that they partook of the same liberty and joy, we answer that they obtained neither through the benefit of the Law. Rather, seeing themselves held captive by the Law in bondage and distress of conscience, they fled for refuge to the gospel. From this it is evident that their exemption from this misery was a particular fruit of the New Testament.
Furthermore, we deny that they possessed such complete liberty or assurance that they tasted nothing of the fear and bondage produced by the Law. For although they enjoyed the privilege they had obtained through the gospel, they were nevertheless subject, together with the rest of the people, to all the observances, burdens, and bonds which then existed.
Since, then, they were compelled to observe the ceremonies, which were signs of that tutelage which Saint Paul says resembled bondage, and also written acknowledgments by which they confessed themselves guilty before God without discharging their debts, it is rightly said that, in comparison with us, they were under a covenant of bondage, if we consider the order and manner in which the Lord then dealt with the people of Israel.
The last three comparisons concern the Law and the gospel. Therefore, in them we must understand the Law under the name of the Old Testament, just as the gospel is signified by the New Testament. The first comparison we made extended further, for it also embraced the condition of the ancient fathers before the Law. As for Saint Augustine’s denial that the promises of that time are included under the Old Testament, his judgment in this matter is sound, and he intended nothing other than what we teach. For he had in view those statements we have cited from Jeremiah and Saint Paul, in which the Old Testament is contrasted with the doctrine of grace and mercy.
He therefore speaks very well when he says that all believers who, from the beginning of the world, were regenerated by God and followed his will in faith and love belong to the New Testament; and that they fixed their hope not upon fleshly, earthly, and temporal goods, but upon spiritual, heavenly, and eternal ones. Above all, they believed in the Mediator, through whom they did not doubt that the Holy Spirit would be given to them and that they would obtain pardon whenever they sinned. This is what I have sought to maintain: namely, that all the saints whom Scripture tells us were chosen by God from the beginning of the world shared with us the same blessings that are given to us for eternal salvation.
There is only this difference between the distinction I have made and Augustine’s: I have sought to distinguish between the clarity of the gospel and the obscurity that preceded it, according to Christ’s declaration:
“The Law and the Prophets were until John the Baptist; from that time the kingdom of God began to be preached.”
Augustine was content to distinguish between the weakness of the Law and the firmness of the gospel. We must also note concerning the ancient fathers that, although they lived under the Old Testament, they did not rest in it, but always aspired to the New and truly participated in it with sincere affection of heart. For the Apostle condemns as blind and accursed all those who, content with outward shadows, did not raise their understanding to Christ. Indeed, what greater blindness could be imagined than to hope for the expiation of one’s sins from the death of a brute beast, or to seek the purification of one’s soul in the bodily sprinkling of water, or to desire to appease God by ceremonies of no worth, as though he took great delight in them? And this is to say nothing of many other similar things. All those, therefore, who occupy themselves with the outward observances of the Law without looking to Christ fall into such absurdity.
The fifth difference, which we said might be added, consists in this: until the coming of Christ, God had set apart one people, to whom he had entrusted the covenant of his grace.
When Almighty God divided the nations, says Moses, when he separated the children of Adam, his people fell to him as his portion; Jacob became his inheritance (Deut. 32). Elsewhere he speaks to the people in this way: “Behold, heaven and earth, and all things contained in them, belong to your God. Nevertheless, he joined himself to your fathers and loved them, choosing their offspring after them out of all the other nations” (Deut. 10).
Our Lord, therefore, bestowed this honor upon that people alone: he made himself known to them as though he belonged more particularly to them than to the others. He entrusted his covenant to them, manifested the presence of his divinity in their midst, and exalted them with every other privilege. But let us pass over the other benefits he bestowed upon them and content ourselves with the one now under consideration: by communicating his Word to them, he joined himself to them so that he might be called and regarded as their God. Meanwhile, he permitted all the other nations to walk in vanity and error, as though they had no acquaintance with him, and he did not give them the remedy by which he might have helped them—namely, the preaching of his Word.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS
For this reason, Israel was then called God’s beloved son, while all the others were regarded as strangers. Israel was said to be known by God and received under his protection and guardianship, while the others were abandoned in their darkness. Israel was said to be sanctified to God, while the others were profane. Israel was said to be honored by the presence of God, while the others were excluded from it.
But when the fullness of time arrived—the time appointed for the restoration of all things—and when the Mediator between God and man was revealed, he broke down the wall that had for so long confined God’s mercy within a single people. He caused peace to be proclaimed to those who were far off as well as to those who were near, so that, being reconciled together to God, they might be united in one body (Eph. 2). Therefore, there is no longer any distinction between Jew and Greek, circumcision and uncircumcision; but Christ is all and in all. To him all the nations of the earth have been given as an inheritance, and the ends of the world as his dominion, so that without distinction he may reign from sea to sea, from east to west.
The calling of the Gentiles is therefore another notable mark by which the excellence of the New Testament over the Old is demonstrated. It had indeed been foretold and attested long before by many prophecies, but in such a way that its fulfillment was reserved for the coming of the Messiah. Even Jesus Christ, at the beginning of his preaching, did not yet open the way to the Gentiles, but deferred their calling until he had accomplished everything belonging to our redemption and, having passed through the period of his humiliation, had received from the Father the name that is above every name, so that every knee should bow before him (Phil. 2).
This is why he told the Canaanite woman that he had been sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. 15). And when he first sent out his apostles, he forbade them to go beyond those boundaries (Matt. 10), for the appointed time of which we have spoken had not yet arrived.
What is more, although the calling of the Gentiles had been demonstrated by so many testimonies, when the time came for it to begin, it nevertheless seemed so new and strange to the apostles that they regarded it almost as a wonder to be feared. Indeed, they undertook it only with great difficulty, and this is not surprising. For it did not appear reasonable to them that God, who had for so long separated Israel from the other nations, should suddenly remove that distinction, as though he had changed his purpose.
This had certainly been foretold by the prophets. Yet they could not listen so attentively to the prophecies that the novelty of the event did not deeply unsettle them. Nor were the examples God had previously given to indicate what he intended to do sufficient to free them from their doubts. For he had called only a very small number of Gentiles into his Church; and moreover, in calling them, he had incorporated them into the people of Israel through circumcision, so that they became, as it were, members of Abraham’s household.
But through the public calling of the Gentiles, which took place after the ascension of Jesus Christ, they were not only raised to the same degree of honor as the Jews, but, what is more, were appointed in their place.