CHAPTER 12
i86
THE PROOF OF THE GOSPEL
Bk. IV.
(i06)and announcing beforehand predictions of the future, and sliewing clearly by His deeds God the Word Who was not seen by the multitude, and He made the end of His life, when He departed from men, in tune with and similar to its beginning.
CHAPTER
77/(7/ ///t' Larvs of Loving-kiiuhiess called Him even to thetii that had been long dead.
(b) Now the laws of love summoned Him even as far as Death and the dead themselves, so that He might summon the souls of those who were long time dead.
And so because He cared for the salvation of all for ages past, and Heh. ii. that "He might bring to naught him that hath the power '4of death," as Scripture teaches, here again he underwent the dispensation in His mingled Natures : as Man, he left His Body to the usual burial, while as God He departed Luke xxiii from it.
For He cried with a loud cry, and said to the 4'''Father :
" I conmiend my spirit," and departed from the (c) body free, in no wise waiting for death, who was lagging as it were in fear to come to Him ; nay, rather, He pursued him from behind and drove him on, trodden under His feet and fleeing, and He burst the eternal gates of his dark realms, and made a road of return back again to life for the dead there bound with the bonds of death.
Thus, too, His own body was raised up, and many bodies of the sleeping saints arose, and came together with Him into the holy and ({l)real City of Heaven, as rightly is said by the holy words:
Isa. XXV. 8. " Death has prevailed and swallowed men up "
; and again :
"The Lord God has taken away every tear from every face."
And the Saviour of the Universe, our Lord, the Christ of God, called \'ictor, is represented in the prophetic predictions as reviling death, and releasing the souls that are bound there, by whom He raises the hymn of victory, and He says these words :
Ch.
12.
REASONS FOR
CHRIST'S DEATH
1S7 " From the hand of Hades I will save them, and from death I will ransom their souls. ^ O Death, where is thy victory?"
O Death, where is thy sting?
The Ho^ xiu. sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is '4; i Cor ^ '^'•55the law.'
Such was the dispensation that brought Him even unto ( 167) death, of which one that wishes to seek for the cause, can find ^ not one reason but many.
| For firstly, the NVord teaches '^ by His deatli that He is Lord both of dead and living and secondly, that He will wash away our sins, being slain, and becoming a curse for us : thirdly, that a victim of God and a great sacrifice for the whole world might be offered to Almighty God; fourthly, that thus He might work out(l') the destruction of the deceitful powers of the dcvmons by unspeakable words; and fifthly also, that shewing the hope of life with God after death to His friends and disciples not by words only by deeds as well, and affording ocular proof of His message. He might make them of good courage and more eager to preach both to (Jreeks and Barbarians the holy polity* which He had established.
I And so at once He ic) ^ filled with His own divine power those very friends and followers, whom He had selected for Himself on account of their surpassing all, and had chosen as His apostles and disciples,'* that they might teach all races of men His message of the knowledge of God, and lay down one way of religion for all the Greeks and Barbarians ; a way which announced the defeat and rout of the daemons, and the check of polytheistic error, and the true knowledge of the one Almighty God, and which promised forgiveness of sins
(.1) before committed, if men no longer continued therein, and one hope of salvation to all by the all-wise and all-goo
polity that He had instituted.
/ * LXX : avTovi.
* i\ SIkv aov.
" Eusebius prophelatn in parte, et in parte aposloluni sequitur."
Gais/ard.
* 0tcur<irat : so for "disciple" in Lucian :
Fugit. 4
; Thtmist. 33c.