2 Chronicles 5 – The
work is finished. Solomon brings in the things his father had dedicated—the
stores of silver and gold, etc. The elders, and heads of the tribes, ancestral
houses come to bring up the Ark out of the city of David to the new Temple. The
number of sheep and oxen sacrifices cannot be numbered. The Ark is placed
“underneath the wings of the cherubim” (5:7).
“There was nothing in the ark except the two tablets that
Moses put there at Horeb, where the Lord made a covenant with the people of
Israel after they came out of Egypt” (5:10). The levitical singers with one
hundred priests who were trumpeters stand east of the altar to make themselves
heard praising the Lord. The house of the Lord was “filled with a cloud, so
that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the
glory of the Lord filled the house of God” (5:13-14).
Augustine (354-439)
On the Profit or Benefit of Believing
13 - I call to
witness, Honoratus, my conscience, and God Who has His dwelling in pure souls,
that I account nothing more prudent,
chaste, and religious, than are all those Scriptures, which under the name of
the Old Testament the Catholic Church retains. You wonder at this, I am
aware. For I cannot hide that we were
far otherwise persuaded. But there is indeed nothing more full of rashness,
(which at that time, being boys, we had
in us,) than in the case of each several book, to desert expounders, who
profess that they hold them, and that they can deliver them to their scholars,
and to seek their meaning from those, who, I know not from what cause
compelling, have proclaimed a most bitter war against the framers and authors
of them. He cannot understand why the Manichees are so
opposed to the Old Testament writings or why two people out to try to
understand them would look to those who are hostile to them. First at least
hear them defended and explained by those who see them as a benefit to mankind.
For who ever thought that the hidden and dark books of
Aristotle were to be expounded to him by one who was the enemy of Aristotle; to
speak of these systems of teaching, wherein a reader may perhaps err without
sacrilege?
Who, in fine, willed to read or learn the geometrical
writings of Archimedes, under Epicurus as a master; against which Epicurus used
to argue with great obstinacy, so far as I judge, understanding them not at
all?
What are those Scriptures of the law most plain, against
which, as though set forth in public, these men make their attack in vain and
to no purpose? And they seem to me to be like that weak woman, whom these same
men are wont to mock at, who enraged at the sun being extolled to her, and
recommended as an object of worship by a certain female Manichee, being as she
was simple-minded and of a religions spirit, leaped up in haste, and often
striking with her foot that spot on which the sun through the window cast
light, began to cry out, Lo, I trample on the sun and your God: altogether after a foolish and womanish manner;
Who denies it? He’s giving in to the discriminatory
thinking of his time here – linking impulsive foolishness with women, kind of
silly considering that the errors and foolishness he’s fundamentally
criticizing here are the work of men mostly.
But do not those men seem to you to be such, who, in matters
which they understand not, either wherefore, or altogether of what kind they
are, although like to matters cast in the way, yet to such as understand them
exact and divine, rending them with great onset of speech and reproaches, think that they are effecting something,
because the unlearned applaud them? Just because
some people who know nothing of the Old Testament writings are persuaded
impulsively to reject them doesn’t mean they should be rejected. Believe me, whatever there is in these
Scriptures, it is lofty and divine: there is in them altogether truth, and a
system of teaching most suited to refresh and renew minds: and clearly so
ordered in measure, as that there is no one but may draw thence, what is enough
for himself, if only he approach to draw
with devotion and piety, as true religion demands.
To prove this to you, needs many reasons and a longer
discourse. For first I must so treat
with you as that you may not hate the authors themselves; next, so as that
you may love them: and this I must treat in any other way, rather than by
expounding their meanings and words. For this reason, because in case we hated
Virgil, nay, rather in case we loved him not, before understanding him, by the
commendation of our forefathers, we should never be satisfied on those
questions about him without number, by which grammarians are wont to be
disquieted and troubled; nor should we listen willingly to one who solved these
at the same time praising him; but should favor that one who by means of these
essayed to show that he had erred and doated. But now, whereas many essay to
open these, and each (in a different way according to his capacity, we applaud
these in preference, through whose exposition the poet is found better, who is
believed, even by those who do not understand him, not only in nothing to have
offended, but also to have sung nothing but what was worthy of praise.
So that in some minute question, we are rather angry with
the master who fails, and has not what to answer, than think him silent through
any fault in Maro. And now, if, in order to defend himself, he should wish to
assert a fault in so great an author, hardly will his scholars remain with him,
even after they have paid his fee. How great matter were it, that we should
show like good will towards them, of whom it has been confirmed by so long time
of old that the Holy Spirit spoke by them? But, forsooth, we youths of the greatest understanding, and marvellous
searchers out of reasons, without having at least unrolled these writings,
without having sought teachers, without having somewhat chided our own
dullness, lastly, without having yielded our heart even in a measure to those
who have willed that writings of this kind be so long read, kept, and handled
through the whole world; have thought that nothing in them is to be believed,
moved by the speech of those who are unfriendly and hostile to them, with whom,
under a false promise of reason, we should be compelled to believe and cherish
thousands of fables.
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