CHAPTER 2 

[From Psalm xliv.]

. . . And in the second place he honours Him with the kingly sceptre. In the third he witnesses to the perfection of His virtue. And then in addition he teaches that He, this same Person, was anointed as God and King by the Highest God, and so that He was Christ. For what else could one be called, who was anointed not by men, but by Almighty God Himself? Of Him therefore he says, "O God (addressing the anointed one), thou hast loved righteousness and hated injustice; wherefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee." As if he were to say, "The Almighty God has anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows," So that this ointment mentioned was nothing common or earthy, nothing resembling that ordained by the Mosaic Law, fashioned of corruptible matter, with which it was the custom to anoint Hebrew priests and kings. Hence we call him properly both Christ and God, being the only one anointed with the immaterial and divine ointment of holy joy and gladness not by men nor by human agencies but by the Creator of the Universe Himself. Wherefore He only has a just, an indefeasible, a good and peculiar right to the title of Christ beyond those who are called His fellows. And who could His "fellows" be but those who are able to say: "We are partakers of Christ," - 237 - of whom it is said, "Touch not my Christs, and do my prophets no harm." So then as Christ by this is clearly revealed as Beloved, and as God, and as King, it is time to inquire, how so great a Being can be said to have enemies, and who they are, and for what cause He sharpened his arrows and sword against them, so that He subjected many peoples to Himself not by array of soldiers, but by truth, gentleness and righteousness.

A careful inquirer would do well to refer this to our Lord and Saviour Jesus the Christ of God, and to turn back again to the record, relating to His Presence among men, by which He routed the hostile invisible powers of evil and corrupt daemons and of wicked and impure spirits, and won very many peoples for Himself out of all nations. Whom also it were fitting to call for this reason the true Christ of God, as one not anointed with common oil like the priests of old days, for we have no record of anything of the kind about Him, but with a better divine unction, in reference to which Isaiah says: "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he hath anointed me." Wherefore also this one Christ is more famous among all, through all the world, than all those who ever were anointed with material ointment among the Hebrews; and has filled the whole world with those who are called Christians after Him. Now in the preceding book I have dealt sufficiently with the questions why we say He was anointed, what the unction was, and the mode of His anointing. Such grace was poured on His lips and on His teaching that in a short time it filled every place with the religion proclaimed by Him; so that now among all nations among those who receive His teaching, agreeably to the prophecy before us, He is clad with the glory of a king and of God, and is called Christ by all men.

And it is clear who are His enemies, not only those who were such of old, but those who are ever fighting against His word, whether they be men, or invisible powers, whom everywhere He has cleared away with unseen and hidden power, and has made all sorts of people from all nations subject to Him.

And that which follows in the Psalm, "Myrrh, aloes and - 238 - cassia from his garments," and the other words besides, which speak as of a princess leaving her father's house, and being wedded to Him who has been foreshewn to be Christ and King and God, and calling Him her Lord, (b) might be referred to the Church of the nations, forsaking ancestral daemonic error, and purified and brought into the communion of the divine Word, if time allowed them to have their true interpretation.