CHAPTER 8
THE PROOF OF THE GOSPEL
Bk. V.
CHAPTER
From the same.
Tlial Moses dearly without Veil reveals God to he Two Lords.
(d) " The sun arose on the earth, and Lot entered Scgor, and Hen. xix. the Lord rained upon Sodom brimstone and fire from the 23.
Lord."
It is clear here that the second " Lord " refers to him that was sent by the greater Lord to punish the ungodly.
Yet if we unreservedly confess two Lords, we do not regard them both as God in the same sense.
We are taught in all reverence to admit an order, that One is the Most High Father and God and Lord, and God and Lord of the Second : but that the Word of God is the Second Lord, Lord of those below Him, and yet not equally with the (233) greater.
For the Word of God is not Lord of the Father, nor God of the Father, but His Image, and Word, and Wisdom, and Power, and Lord and God of those that come after Him ; whereas the Father is Father and Lord and God even of the Son.
Wherefore a reverent theology in our opinion rightly recurs to one Source of being and to one God. chapti:r From ihc same.
That the Same Seivaiit of God shcivs a Second Beiiiii called God and Lord, and relates that He was seen in Human Shape and Form and ansivered Them of Old Tim:.
[Passages quoted, Gen. xii.
; xvii. i ; xviii. i, 17.] And again he adds to this, as if speaking of Anotlier " For I knew that he will establish his children, and his house after him, and they will keep the ways of llie Lord, to do riglUeousness and judgment, so that the
Ch. 9.
ANGEL OF ABRAHAM
Lord will bring on Abraham what things he spake to Gen. xviii. him."
19The Lord \\"ho answers, Who is recorded to have said this (234) to Abraham, is represented as clearly confessing another Lord to be his Father and the Maker of all things.
At least Abraham, who as a prophet has a clear conception of the speaker, prophetically continues with the words
" Wilt thou destroy the righteous man with the Gen. xviii wicked, and shall the righteous be as the wicked ?
If 23-25. there be fifty righteous in the city, wilt thou destroy them ?
Wilt thou not spare [all] the place, because of the fifty righteous ?
Be it far from thee to fulfil this (b) word, and destroy the righteous with the wicked, and that the righteous should be as the wicked.
Li no way let him, that judgeth all the earth, not do judgment."^ I hardly think that this could have been said suitably to angels or to any of God's ministering spirits.
For it could not be regarded as a minor duty to judge all the earth.
And he is no angel who is named in the previous passage, but One greater than an angel, the God and Lord who was seen beside the before-mentioned oak with the two angels in human form.
Nor can it be thought that Almighty God Himself is meant.
For il is impious to suggest that the (c) Divine changes and puts on the shape and form of a man.
And so it remains for us to own that it is the Word of God who in the preceding passage is regarded as divine : whence the place is even to-day honoured by those who live in the neighbourhood as a sacred place in honour of those who appeared to Abraham, and the terebinth ^ can still be seen '
S. puts stop at "In no way "=" certainly not"; and cntls the verse as in A .V. with a (jiieslion.
* " Was the tree an oak or a terebinth ?
The ancient testimonies are conflicting, but the balance of evidence is in favour of the terebinth."
(J. G.
P'razer, Folklore in the O. T. iii. 57.) It is a terebinth in Josephus, Pell. Jtid. iv.
; ^r"^l i" the Itntcraritim Ihirdigaleuse (a. I>.
},},},) ; Ilineraria Hittosi^lynitaiia, P. Geycr, Vienna, 189S, p. 25.
\L\\<,t\A\if,(Oiioinaslicou, s. v.
'ApBii, pp. 54, 56, cd.
V. Carsow and G.
Parlhey) mentions an oak, a memorial, and a terebinth.
Jerome (circa
A.D. 38S,
Lifter lie situ ct ticvi. loc. Heb. s. v.
" Arbo") implies that the terebinth no longer existed.
(Migne, Pat.
I.at. xxiii. 862.) For Constantine's Church, and Sozomen s description of the Festival there (Sozomen, H.E. ii.
4), connectcfl with ancient 'IVce-Worship, see Fraser, loc. ct.
The tree now shewn is a large uak, one and a half miles west rf Hebron.