CHAPTER 17

From the same.

How the Lord foretells that He will come from Heaven and dwell among Men, and that the Nations will flee to Him, and He states that the was sent by Another Almighty Lord stronger than Himself.

[Passage quoted, Zech. ii. 10.]

As it is now my object to unfold from the prophets the second cause of our Lord's living our life on earth, the prophecy before us appears to state it so clearly that it hardly needs any elaboration. You will notice that He gives the cause of His coming, where He says, "And many nations shall flee unto the Lord in that day, and they shall be to me for a people." And the Word announces this to the daughter of Sion, calling the Church of God by this name, through her seeming to be the daughter of the heavenly Jerusalem, she that is the mother of the Saints, according to the holy apostle. Or the Church of God might be called the daughter of Sion for another reason as one separated from the former congregation of the Jews by the apostles and evangelists, who also were the children of a mother divorced for her own impiety, and a widow because she had driven away her Husband, Who rebuked her by the prophets and said, "Hast thou not called me as a husband, and father, and leader of thy virginity?" And accusing their mothers ways also to them that were born of her He says: "Where is the bill of thy mother's divorcement, by which I rejected her?" And again: "Judge the cause of your mother, judge it, because she is not my wife, and I am not her husband."

So, then, this prophecy rightly announces the presence of the Lord to those who had rejected their mother (calling them) the daughter of the Lord. And it is the Church of the Gentiles that is reckoned by the apostles of our Saviour to have taken the place of her that before was daughter.