Teaching Christianity
And thus we see that it was by way of recapitulation that he added, And the whole earth was one lip and one voice for all, with the narrative going back imperceptibly to tell us how it came about that from having one language, they were divided by many.[78] And straightaway the story is told of the building of that tower, where this punishment for pride was meted out to them by God's judgment, after which they were scattered through the earth according to their languages.
54. There can be even more obscure cases of this recapitulation, as where in the gospel the Lord says, On the day that Lot came out of Sodom, he rained down fire from heaven and destroyed them all; that is how the day of the Son of Man will be, on which he is revealed. In that hour, whoever is on the roof, and his tools in the house, let him not come down to fetch them; and whoever is in the field, let him likewise not come back. Let him remember Lot's wife (Lk 17:29–32). Is it really only when the Lord is revealed that these things have to be observed, that one should not look back, should not hanker, that is, for the past mode of life one has renounced, and not rather during this present time, so that when the Lord is revealed due retribution may be awarded according to what each one has observed or ignored? And yet because it says, In that hour, one would naturally think that these things are to be observed at the moment when the Lord is revealed, unless one's senses were alert while reading to understand a case of recapitulation.
We are helped to do this by another text which cried out, still in the time of the apostles, Children, it is the last hour (1 Jn 2:18). So the very time during which the gospel is being preached, up until the Lord is revealed, is the hour in which these things have to be observed, because that revelation of the Lord belongs itself to the same hour, which will come to its end on the day of judgment.[79]
37, 55. Tychonius' seventh and last rule is "about the devil and his body." He too, after all, is a head, but of the