The Altercation between Theophilus the Christian and Simon the Jew

There was, then, an altercation concerning the Law between a certain Simon, a Jew, and Theophilus, a Christian. The Jew accordingly spoke thus: O standard-bearer of the cross-worship, you profess yourself to be an upholder of the Christian law. You have in me also a patient hearer, provided only that you prove the truth by my questions, not by the flatteries of speech or by arguments, but by the presence of the Law itself. But if you shall conquer me today, make me a Christian; or if I shall overcome you, I will make you a Nazarene Jew.

THEOPHILUS.—Let not the hunchback boast as if he were upright.

SIMON.—Whom do you worship?

TH.—Assuredly, we declare it, and we boldly prove it.

SIM.—The resounding voice of the sacred and venerable Deuteronomy says: See that I am, and there is no other God besides me. And Isaiah says: I am the first and I am the last, and beside me there is no God.

TH.—It is the most sacred voice of Christ, which if you wish to know, you must first believe, and then at last you will be able to understand. For Isaiah rebukes you, saying: Unless you believe, you will not understand. Without doubt, then, we know, and we know, and we worship the omnipotent invisible God: thereafter we profess Christ God and the Son of God. But that which he says: I am the first and I am the last, signifies the two comings of Christ.

SIM.—What of that which he says: Besides me there is no God?

TH.—Christ, God and the Son of God, said this of himself, because he foresaw that Antichrist would come. Of whom the prophet Zechariah says: Behold, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, and that which perishes he will not visit, and the scattered he will not seek, and the crushed he will not save, and the whole he will not perfect, and he will eat the flesh of the elect, he will overturn them. A sword is upon his arm, and upon his right eye; it shall be utterly withered, and his right eye shall be blinded. Therefore Christ says: I am the first and I am the last.

SIM.—Then do you make two?

TH.—God is one, from whom is Christ, and in whom is God: just as Abraham at the oak of Mamre saw three, whom, going out to meet, he greeted as one, saying: Lord, if I have found grace before you, take water, and let your feet be washed, and refresh yourself under this tree; whereby, evidently, Abraham beheld the presence of the divinity, in that the tree of the cross of Christ would afford to believers a covering of refreshment, concerning which the prophet says in the psalm: God has stood in the assembly of gods, and in the midst he judges the gods. He speaks assuredly of Christ, who taught in the assembly of gods, and worked mighty deeds; therefore in the forty-fourth psalm he says: Your throne, O God, is forever and ever: a scepter of equity is the scepter of your kingdom: you have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.

What God, on account of whom he calls him God, O Jew? Assuredly God the Father calls Christ, the Son of God, for whom and of whom the most esteemed of the prophets, Jeremiah, says: This is God, and there is no other, nor shall any be reckoned beside him: who found out all wisdom, and gave it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved. After this he was seen upon earth, and conversed with men. Likewise in the forty-fifth psalm he says: Be still, and see that I am God: I will be exalted among the nations, and I will be exalted in the earth. And in the sixty-seventh psalm: Sing to the Lord, sing praise to his name, make a way for him who ascends upon the west: the Lord is his name. It would be tedious to pursue further examples: by these few the truth is proved.

SIM.—Rightly indeed, as to those who worship, testimonies confessed with one accord, agreeing with your mouth; but I wish you to explain this, whether anywhere God himself has established Christ as God: then at length I will consider Christ as God and the Son of God.

TH.—O unbelieving Jew, do you now dispute even about the prophets? Yet receive an answer to your questions. God speaks to Moses, saying: Behold, I have made you a god to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. Consider now that Moses, the type of Christ, was a god to the unbelieving nations. How much more is Christ the God of believers! For as Moses freed the people from Egypt, from the most cruel servitude of Pharaoh; so also Christ freed believers from the power of the devil.

SIM.—If then Christ is God and the Son of God, how then is it written in Genesis: In the beginning God made heaven and earth? He could have said: In the beginning the Father and the Son of God made heaven and earth.

TH.—You err, O Jew, nor will you ever find the truth, unless you understand the origin of truth. For if you are willing to believe, you will be able even in its beginning to find who Christ the Son of God is: for thus it says: God made heaven and earth, that is, in the judgment of Christ, and according to his will, and in whose image he deigned to make man; for he says: Let us make man according to the image and likeness of God: male and female he made them.

SIM.—He could have said this also of the angels.

TH.—You err, O Jew. To which of the angels did God ever say: You are my Son: today I have begotten you? And again in the psalm he says: I will set him as a prince exalted above the kings of the earth. But he commands the angels to adore Christ. And again in the Canticle of Deuteronomy he says: Rejoice, ye nations, with him, and let all the angels of God adore him.

SIM.—Prove to me that Christ is a prince.

TH.—I have already said it. Now receive another proof, if you can at least believe even this. For when Joshua the son of Nun stood beyond the Jordan, he saw a man standing, with a sword sharp on both sides in his hand. Joshua said to him: Are you ours, or of our adversaries? I am the prince of the host of the majesty of the Lord.

SIM.—And I wish you would explain this to me also, how Christ is the Son; for all the saints also are called sons of God: therefore, just as you have proved to me that he is that prince, now prove that he is the Son of God, born of God. For the divinity is far removed from human intercourse, nor is it mingled with embrace.

TH.—You speak as a Jew. For Christ, God, the Son of God, the first-begotten, brought forth by the Word, uttered by the mouth. For just as God, when in the beginning he had made man from the slime of the earth, breathed his own breath into him, and man became a living soul; so also he begot his Word, that is Christ, from the womb of his own heart; as it is said in the second book of Kings: And the word of the Lord came to Nathan the prophet, saying: Go and say to my servant David: You shall not build me a house to dwell in; but when your days are fulfilled, I will raise up your seed after you: he shall build a house for my name, and I will set up his throne forever: and I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son, and faithfulness shall follow, and his house.

And in the second psalm he says: Why have the nations raged, and the peoples meditated vain things? Likewise in the forty-fourth psalm: My heart has uttered a good word: I speak my works to the king. Isaiah says: I have heard of things finished indeed and cut short; for God makes a Word cut short upon all the earth. This is the Word who healed our stripes, of whom in the hundred and fifth psalm it is said: He sent his Word, and healed them. Likewise in another psalm the prophet bears witness that the heaven, of which we spoke above, he made through Christ, and in Christ who is the Word of God: By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all the strength of them by the Spirit of his mouth.

There is the Word who swiftly runs through the world, and turns the souls of the erring by the new law to God: of whom in the hundred and forty-sixth psalm: Who sends forth his Word to the earth, his speech runs swiftly. And Isaiah says: Behold, the Word of the Lord was made to them a curse, and they would not have it. For our prophet John cries out with prophetic mouth: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God. This was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing. And again the Son in like manner bears witness to the Father and testifies to the beginnings of his own birth, saying through Solomon: I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, the first-begotten before every creature. I made in the heavens that the unfailing light should arise. I dwelt in the highest places, and my throne is in a pillar of cloud.

See, then, that as your fathers went out of Egypt, it was Christ who went before them in a pillar of cloud. Likewise there in the Proverbs of the same: The Lord established me in the beginning of his ways, before his works: before he made the earth, and before all the hills, he begot me. When he prepared the heavens, I was there with him; and when he set apart his throne, when he made the strong foundations of the earth, I was together with him, arranging all things. I was he in whom he took delight, and daily I rejoiced before his face, when he rejoiced in the perfected world.

SIM.—He could have said this of Wisdom.

TH.—You err, O Jew, and your understanding is covered as it were with the veil of ignorance. Not without reason did the most holy Moses veil his face with the covering of a veil, which veil covers your hearts. Approach, therefore, to the Lord and the Son of God, and the covering of ignorance will be taken away from your understanding. You think it was said of Wisdom, not knowing that Christ himself is the power of God and the wisdom of God. So true is this that your kings, who reigned by succession, could not receive wisdom and power, except through the name and title of Christ. I will give Daniel as the author of this saying: The vision and the prophecy shall be sealed. Everlasting righteousness shall arise, and the Holy of Holies shall be anointed: and you shall know and understand, from the going forth of the word in answering; and I will build Jerusalem even unto Christ of Christs, and the King of your kings: the anointing of Samaria shall fail, that horn.

Then your kings were anointed, and all the prophets were silent, because he of whom they spoke had come, as Isaiah says: I am he who spoke, and I have come to bring you good tidings. Therefore, as we have said, he himself is the Christ of Christs, the Lord of lords. I will give Isaiah as the author, saying: Thus says the Lord to my Christ, the Lord, whose right hand he has held, that the nations may obey him: I will break the strength of kings, I will open the gates before him, and the cities shall not be closed. I will open the brazen gates, and break the iron bars, and I will give you hidden treasures. Whose right hand, then, did the Father hold, if not that of Christ the Son, whom all the nations obeyed, as it is said in the Psalm: You have always held my right hand? Or what city is closed to him? And to whom do all the brazen gates lie open?

Or will he even dare to dispute concerning his birth? Since the same prophet says: The word of the Lord came, to Ahaz: Ask you a sign of the Lord your God, either in the depth of hell, or in the height above. And Ahaz said: I will not ask, and I will not tempt the Lord. And he said: Hear now, O house of David: Shall it be a small thing for you to strive with men; and therefore you will hold your ground in a contest with men, because the Lord God himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a Virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel; which is interpreted, God with us.

SIM.—I believe the prophets. Moreover I accept Isaiah as most esteemed; but I think he spoke of another virgin. For when Shalmaneser, king of the Assyrians, had sent his general to Jerusalem to reproach the living God; then Isaiah prophesied against king Shalmaneser, saying: The virgin daughter of Zion has despised you, has mocked you. The daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head at you. When also the angel struck one hundred eighty thousand from the camps of the Assyrians, in this was God with us.

TH.—You err, O Jew: you have not yet removed your unbelief. If, then, you say "daughter of Jerusalem," what son did she bear? Or who ate butter and honey? Or what infant was it who, before he knew father or mother, took away the spoils of Samaria? Or what son did he nourish of the seed of David? For Isaiah said: Behold, a Virgin shall conceive in the womb, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel. He shall eat butter and honey: before he knows how to call father or mother, he shall receive the strength of Damascus, and the spoils of Samaria, against the king of the Assyrians.

SIM.—Explain to me, then, what these things mean, that I may be able to believe; what butter or honey is understood to signify; or what spoils of Samaria Christ received.

TH.—If you would remove unbelief, you would hear the truth, lest perhaps there be fulfilled in you that which is written: Like deaf asps, and stopping their ears, which do not hear the voice of enchanters. For Isaiah boldly cries out against your unbelief, saying: The words of this book shall be to you as the words of a sealed book; which if you give to a man knowing letters, to read, he says: I cannot read, for it is sealed. Or if you give it to one not knowing letters, and say, Read, he will say, I have not learned. First, because Christ, according to the birth of all infants, ate butter and honey. This we believe, and thus we guard our life; and that on the eighth day he was circumcised. Now butter is understood as the anointing of the Spirit; but honey the sweetness of his teaching, which we attain.

And he took away the spoils of Samaria in this manner: that when he was an infant, he received gifts from the Magi, gold, frankincense and myrrh; and afterward, grown up, when he taught and demonstrated all truth, Samaria and Damascus, leaving their idols, rightly believed, abandoning the Assyrian, that is, the devil.

SIM.—Well indeed you disclose the mysteries in every point. And since you have proved that Christ and the Son of God was brought forth from the mouth of God, begotten of the Word, and born of a Virgin. How then do you assert that he was born of the seed of David in the city of Bethlehem?

TH.—I will give Isaiah as authority: A rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise from its root, and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon it. For the rod was Mary the virgin, who proceeded from the seed of David, from whom Christ, the flower of the patriarchs, is born according to the flesh. For God, who in Numbers made a sign, that an ass should speak, willed to make a much greater sign, that Christ should be born of a virgin. Or what dispute would there be between me and you, unless it were that a Virgin gave birth?

SIM.—I believe the Virgin, as you say, could have conceived by the Spirit. The question is, whether a virgin could give birth.

TH.—Unbeliever! God was able to split a rock, and bring forth water for the thirsting; how much more was God able to command that a virgin should bring forth a child! I tell you yet another testimony, if only you will believe Baruch, the son of Neri, who prophesied in Babylon.

SIM.—So now you already consider me faithless, that I would not receive Baruch, the disciple of Jeremiah, who, sent so many times by Jeremiah, addressed the people, and whom Jeremiah also ordered to write down his prophecy. And because Jeremiah knew that people would be poured out into captivity, he prophesied; but of Christ he made no mention.

TH.—How then near the end of his book did he prophesy concerning his birth, and the fashion of his garment, and his passion and resurrection, saying: This is my anointed, my chosen one, cast forth from an undefiled womb, said to be born and to suffer. And that his tunic was woven from above—all these things, Simon, if you believe, or when you come into the fullness of our Gospels, you will know as fulfilled. But that he was born in Bethlehem, hear the prophet Micah saying: And you, Bethlehem, house of Ephrata, you shall not be small, so as to be reckoned among the thousands of Judah. For out of you shall come forth to me one who is to be ruler in Israel, and whose origin is from of old, from the days of eternity.

SIM.—We read many things indeed; but we do not understand them thus: therefore I wish, through the individual points which I ask, to know things confirmed by the testimony of truth. Moreover, since God commanded circumcision, which he first delivered to the patriarchs; which circumcision you have professed above that Christ had: how then do you urge me to believe you, who forbid circumcision?

TH.—We forbid circumcising the flesh, but we gladly hold that the circumcised should believe. For Abraham, before he was circumcised, became the friend of God, and attained righteousness through faith, not through circumcision. For thus it says: I have made you the father of many nations before God, because you believed. Accordingly it says: Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness. This he heard before he was circumcised, and afterward received circumcision, showing that two peoples would come to the faith of Christ, one from circumcision, and one from the foreskin. For if Christ had not been circumcised, how would you today believe me, or believe the prophets, that he would come from the seed of David? For circumcision is a sign of lineage, not of salvation.

SIM.—Then how is it that the angel was strangling the son of Moses, since he was in the foreskin, unless Zipporah his mother, taking a stone, had circumcised him? And when the blood pressed near, she prayed saying: Let the blood of the child's circumcision stand.

TH.—You speak against yourself, O Jew; and I told you above that Moses was a type of Christ: everything whatsoever he did, ran ahead in the image of Christ. For Zipporah, the woman who circumcised the child, is understood as the synagogue. But what is said: Let the blood of the child's circumcision stand; accordingly God spoke thus to Moses: Build me an altar of uncircumcised stones, and you shall not put iron upon them: which signified that Christ, coming, was to build the Church out of an uncircumcised people.

Sim.—Prove to me that Christ circumcised no one.

Th.—Believe, and you will prove it to yourself: when you begin to unroll the fullness of the Gospels, there you will find Matthew the apostle, the tax-collector, and Zacchaeus the chief of the tax-collectors, and you will find many uncircumcised who believed along with the Jews. For if the sacrifices of the old age, the offerings of bulls and rams and lambs, once commanded, were taken away and forbidden, and the lesser people—that is, ours—was preferred to the greater, and the New Testament set before the Old; so also he commanded that circumcision now be celebrated not of the flesh, but of the heart. God says to Rebecca in Genesis: Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall be divided from your belly, and people shall overcome people, and the elder shall serve the younger. And in Deuteronomy he says: You shall be nations at the head, but the unbelieving people at the tail.

And Jacob, blessing Ephraim and Manasseh, changing his hands, placing the right hand upon the younger, showed forth the alteration of the creature. But concerning the newest Testament, thus says Isaiah: Behold I make new things, which now shall arise, and I will place rivers in the desert, that is, the Gospels in the Church. And Jeremiah says: Behold, the days come, says the Lord; and I will complete for the house of Israel and the house of Judah a new testament; not such a testament as I arranged with your fathers, in the day when I led them out of the land of Egypt. Hear now what Moses the lawgiver says concerning circumcision: In the last days the Lord shall circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed, to the Lord your God, unto the commandment. And Jeremiah says: Men of Judah, and you who dwell in Jerusalem, renew for yourselves a fallow field, and do not sow upon thorns.

Be circumcised to your God, and circumcise the foreskins of your heart, lest wrath go forth and burn, and there be none to quench it. And to Joshua the son of Nun God says: Make for yourself very sharp stone knives, and circumcise the sons of Israel a second time. Was iron then lacking? But God was speaking of our Lord Jesus Christ, that through his apostles he would spiritually circumcise hearts; accordingly our apostle, called Simon, afterward received the name Peter.

Sim.—Clear are the things you have shown me: and what can the circumcision of the heart be, and that the foreskin is to be circumcised from the heart?

Th.—All concupiscence and lust is conceived in the heart: therefore the circumcision of the New Testament is such as God and Christ his Son showed. Let us circumcise lust, avarice, malice, cupidity, thefts, frauds, fornications; and whatever you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to another. This is the circumcision of Christians, which also the first of the saints had, namely Enoch, Noah, Job and Melchizedek; who had not the circumcision of the flesh, but of the heart. God could have formed Adam already circumcised.

Sim.—I burn with vehement thought, that Christ should have sustained a passion so accursed and full of mockery: if indeed what you say is true, that he was fixed to the gibbet of the cross by the fathers. We know that Haman, cursed by our fathers for his deserving, was hanged, who had sought the destruction of our race, in whose accomplished death, when the year comes round, we rejoice, and celebrate the solemn festival of vows, which we received handed down from the fathers; and we read that Absalom, who was a patricide unto slaughter, hung upon a tree. But if Christ sustained the gibbet of this death, and hung upon a cross; why have we not received this very thing from our fathers, nor found him having suffered in our Scriptures, that we might rejoice as at an enemy inflicted upon our nation? You may well blush, Theophilus, if you do not prove this saying in the least. For it is written in Deuteronomy: Cursed is the man who hangs upon a tree.

Th.—First receive the reasoning of this saying. Recall the earlier reading of Deuteronomy, of which it is said: For thus Moses says: If anyone sins, let him be punished by an example of the judgment of death: you shall hang him on a tree; and everyone who hangs on a tree shall be cursed. But this he says of the sinner, who committed mortal sin. But Christ committed no sin, as all the prophets testify; but he had need to suffer, that Scripture might be fulfilled. For Isaiah says: Who did no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth; but the Lord delivered him up for our sins. For elsewhere we have shown the prophet to have said: Behold, the word of the Lord became to them a curse, and they did not want it. And again he says: He was reckoned among the accursed. Hear also Jeremiah saying in the Lamentation: The breath of our countenance, Christ the Lord, was seized unto the destruction of our nation; under whose shadow we live among the nations.

But we know that most holy David, full of years, rested in peace, and sustained no passion of death or of the cross. Hear then Christ speaking in the twenty-first psalm: They pierced my hands and my feet, they numbered all my bones. They indeed considered and looked upon me: they divided my garments among themselves, and cast lots upon my vesture. But you, Lord, do not put far off your help; look to my defense: and the rest which is said in the three following verses. Likewise through Isaiah: I have spread out my hands to a people not believing and contradicting, who walk in ways not good, but after their own sins. Likewise in Jeremiah: Come, let us put wood into his bread, and let us cut off his life from the land. Likewise in Deuteronomy: And your life shall hang before your eyes, and you shall fear day and night, and you shall not believe in your life. Likewise in the one hundred fortieth psalm: The lifting up of my hands, an evening sacrifice.

Likewise in Zechariah: And they shall look upon me, whom they have pierced. Likewise in the eighty-seventh psalm: I have cried to you, Lord, all the day, I have spread out my hands to you. Likewise in Numbers: God is hung up as a man, and does not suffer threats as a son of man. And in the Song of Songs, from the person of the Church, he says: My brother is white and ruddy, pierced by a lance from soldiers. What else does that whiteness show but the faith of the people? For redness signifies the passion. For in this his first coming he was to sustain all humility and disfigurement even unto death; hear finally in the twenty-first psalm what he says: But I am a worm and not a man, the reproach of men and the outcast of the people. All who saw me mocked me, they spoke with their lips and shook their heads.

Likewise there: My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue has cleaved to my jaws, and you have brought me down into the dust of death. Likewise there: It shall please the Lord above a young bullock, bringing forth horns and hoofs. What do you say, Jew? Was David horned? Come now, understand that cluster of grapes in Numbers, which two men carried back, bearing it on a pole, from the land of promise: which surely was a figure of Christ hanging upon the tree. Coming from the land of promise, that is, from Mary, who was of earthly lineage. But the two carrying the pole showed forth the figure of two peoples: one the former, namely your people, turning its back to Christ; the other the latter, looking upon the cluster, namely, understood as our people.

Sim.—What will you say about the pomegranates, which were brought to Moses together with that same cluster of grapes? Th.—Most rightly did the pomegranates follow the cluster. For it was assuredly a figure of the Church, having within herself a people reckoned by the redness of Christ's blood. Sim.—What will you say about the fig-trees, or by what arguments and treatises will you prove that the fig is not sin, since when the first-formed Adam in his transgression wove fig leaves to cover his shame, which was the itch and bitterness of sin? Th.—You understand this only at the surface, Jew: for the fig tree and the covering of its leaves is understood to be a figure of the old man.

For if you would consider the spiritual man, that is, the inner man, you will find that the fruit of the fig tree, brought to Moses from the land of promise, is understood spiritually, just as king Hezekiah of Judah, after the lengthening of his life, received a lump of figs for the healing of his flesh. It is added, saying: Take for yourself a lump of figs of the land, and make a poultice, and you shall be healed: that is, that with impieties broken, you might receive the healing of lust. Let us now return to the humility of Christ and his coming, of which we were speaking; you will hear Isaiah saying: Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We announced concerning him, as an infant; he had no form nor comeliness; and we saw him, and he had no form nor comeliness: a man set in affliction, and who knows how to bear infirmities; for his face was turned away, it was despised, and not esteemed.

He bore our sins, and is in sorrows for us. As a sheep he was led to the slaughter; and as a lamb before its shearer, so he opened not his mouth: in humility his judgment was taken away. But his generation who shall declare? For his life shall be taken from the earth: he was led to death by the wicked of my people; and I gave the rich for his death, because he committed no sin, nor was guile found in his mouth: but the Lord willed to deliver him up for our sins, and he was reckoned among the wicked. Likewise there he testifies concerning the humility of his first coming, saying: I gave my back to the scourges, and my cheeks to the palms of hands, I did not turn my face from the foulness of spitting: and the Lord was my helper. And Jeremiah says: I was led as a sheep to the sacrifice, and I knew it not.

Concerning this very lamb, in the image of Christ, Moses in Egypt celebrated the passover for the liberation of the people: nor could the people of God be freed otherwise from the house of bondage and from the oppression of Pharaoh, unless the lamb were slain, and the passover celebrated, and the thresholds of the house marked with its blood, so that when the destroying angel came, seeing the blood of the lamb upon the houses, they might be saved. This sacrament was fulfilled before the foretold coming of Christ. For on account of this he was slain in his first coming, that he might free us from the power of the devil and from the worship of idols. He is called "of one year," because after he was baptized in the Jordan, he preached for a year, and so suffered: and we are reckoned as marked on the forehead with his blood, that in the second coming, when the destruction of this world shall come, we may be able to be saved.

As the author of this matter I will give the prophet Ezekiel, who himself also signifies the two comings of Christ, saying: Pass through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that mourn for the iniquity that is done in the land. And again he signifies the second coming, the destruction of those not marked, saying: Go into the city, and spare not the old man, nor the young, nor women, nor little children, spare not the sword. But upon whomsoever you find the mark, do not touch them, and spare my holy ones. This sign Rahab the harlot, who was a figure of the Church, hung as scarlet cord and rope in the window, so that when Joshua the son of Nun came to war against Jericho, seeing the scarlet sign, Rahab and those who were in her house might be saved.

So also at the coming of Christ, when Christ the Son of God shall begin to come to burn this age with fire, the Church and those who are marked upon the forehead in her shall be saved. So also Hosea, who held the type of Christ, is bidden to take a harlot wife, that is, the Church, whom Christ took from the fornication of idols, because the beginning of fornication is the service of idols. Sim.—Is the Church, then, a harlot? Th.—For what else is interpreted as "harlot" except that to all who come to her, she denies to none the gain of the faith? For when the Synagogue was repudiated, Christ took the Church to himself. For hear Jeremiah saying: I sent away your mother, and gave her a bill of divorce, which I gave to your mother, because I sent her away. And another prophet says: Plead with your mother, for I am not her husband.

This is also the power of God, Christ, concerning whom Solomon, in the person of the Jews, prophesied, saying: Let us circumvent the just man, for he is contrary to our works. He reproaches us for our sins and our discipline. He calls himself the Son of God. Let us see if his words are true: let us condemn him to a most shameful death. For there will be a testing by our words, or by his. For if he is truly the Son of God, he will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. These things they thought, and they erred: their own malice blinded them, and they knew not the mysteries of God. And Moses says in Deuteronomy: The innocent and just you shall not kill. But that he rose from the dead, Scripture testifies in the psalm, saying: For you will not leave my soul in hell, nor suffer your Holy One to see corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life, you shall fill me with joy with your countenance.

Likewise in Psalm 29: Lord, you have brought up my soul from the depths. Likewise it says in a psalm: I slept, and took my rest, and I rose up, for the Lord will sustain me. And Hosea: He will bring us to life after two days, and on the third day he will raise us up. And the Lord says to Moses in Exodus: Go down, and testify to the people, and purify them, that they may wash their garments, and be purified on the third day. And Isaiah: Now I will arise, says the Lord, now I will be glorified, now you shall see, now you shall be ashamed: vain shall be the dread of your hope: fire shall consume you. And concerning his death: The sun shall set at noon, and the day of light shall be darkened, and I will turn your feast days into mourning. And Jeremiah says: He was slain while it was yet day.

That he ascended into the heavens, David testifies in Psalm 67, saying: Make way for him who ascends upon the west, the Lord is his name. Likewise in Psalm 46: God has ascended with jubilation, the Lord with the sound of the trumpet. Likewise in Psalm 18: His going forth is from the highest heaven, and there is none that can hide himself from his heat. Likewise in Psalm 24, at Christ's ascension into the heavens, it is said to the angel gatekeepers: Lift up your gates, O princes, and be lifted up, O everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in. But those who did not know Christ the Word instilled into the Virgin, marveling that in such array, and bearing back a victorious trophy, he should ascend into heaven, ask: Who is this King of glory? To whom answer is given: The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory. Likewise in Psalm 109: The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.

Concerning the glory of the kingdom of his second coming, in Daniel: I saw in a vision by night, and behold, in the clouds of heaven one like a son of man coming, came even to the Ancient of Days. And royal power was given to him: and all glory shall serve him: and his faith is eternal, which shall not be moved, and his kingdom shall not be destroyed. Say among the nations: The Lord has reigned from the wood. Likewise in Isaiah: A child is born to us, whose government is upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called the Angel of great counsel. And if you wish to know the whole fullness of the Gospels, you will find in our John that Christ, going to his passion, carried the cross upon his shoulders, concerning whom Isaiah says these things. Sim.—You have indeed shown me all things prefigured in Christ, by manifest proof from my own Scriptures: and I would indeed have believed, if the consideration of this psalm did not call me back.

For this psalm was spoken concerning Solomon: "O God, your judgment"—which you proposed to me a while ago; so much so that its title refutes you, since it says: A psalm concerning Solomon. Th.—That Enemy who deceived the first-formed man and beguiled your people, through whose envy death came into the world; he, that is, has forestalled the perception of your heart, so that you do not understand a matter that is manifest and set in the light, being blinded by error. For Solomon reigned in Judea forty years, from Dan even to Beersheba; and afterward he sinned, as is said in the third book of Kings: And Solomon did evil, and did not walk in the way of David his father; but he built the high place of Chemosh, the idol of Moab, and for their king the idols of the sons of Ammon, and Astaroth, the abomination of the Sidonians; and God stirred up against Solomon himself Hadad the Edomite as an adversary. But the kingdom of Christ has been extended over the whole world.

Therefore the prophet recalls this concerning him, saying: He shall continue with the sun, and before the moon, throughout generations, and he shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. He does not speak of Solomon, whose kingdom and years I have shown you above. Sim.—I see that the enemy of my fathers, the devil, who was blinding my mind, withdraws from my understanding. For I have begun to recognize the light of truth. Th.—Believe, then, and, being illuminated, come forth from the bonds of darkness. For thus Isaiah says of Christ: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, therefore he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to bring out of bonds those who are bound, and out of the house of the prison, to open the eyes of the blind. What else can be understood, except men of this age, held fast in the blindness of ignorance, and bound in the chains of the devil?

Sim.—You have indeed shown me many things unheard-of; but still there remains in my soul a scruple of hesitation, in that you observe all the other things, yet the Sabbath, which God commanded to be kept and observed, you neglect. Moreover you take food and wine after the manner of the Gentiles: whereas God expressly commanded which of the animals and fish ought to be eaten, and which to be shunned and abhorred, and their dead bodies not to be touched. Unless you prove this by the Scriptures, I am in peril of believing. Th.—I have already said above that the devil envies you, in that you are the son of your fathers, who, sustained by so many benefits, having been freed from Egypt, stood about the brazen calf beside the Red Sea: whence also, supplied with abundant feasts, sated with heavenly manna, forgetting in transgression the profane gods whom they had worshiped, they dared to demand them back.

Rightly did Jeremiah say of you: If the Ethiopian can change his skin, or the leopard his spots; so also can you. As for the evil sabbaths, that is, the imaginary rest of the seventh day that was handed down: firstly, that Joshua the son of Nun, in order to war down Jericho, circled the walls seven days in succession, the men carrying the weapons of war, bearing the ark of the covenant: but on the seventh day they went round seven times. It is manifest truth: either they began on a sabbath; or on a sabbath, when the walls fell, they warred down Jericho. Add to this that God rejects the human sabbath, Isaiah saying: Your fast and your feast day and your sabbaths my soul hates. You have become a weariness to me: I will not forgive your sins. But that sabbath which God desires is that you rest from evil works; so that in the thousandth year, which is the sabbath of sabbaths, the world may be found free from evil works.

These shall be the holy things to be held, in which God takes delight. As for the food you doubt whether you ought to eat—you are not forbidden pork, but you are forbidden to partake of the deeds of swine. Likewise the pleasure of water mixed with mud—you couple with your sister in intercourse, you incite blood to blood, you scour the land with plunder, you make your feast days public, you pray in the public squares. See how you sin, and do not understand that it is written of you in the psalm: They were sated with their children, and left what remained over to their little ones. This is your sin, and that of your posterity. As for fish, you eat those clothed in skin with scales; but the rest, which you feign to avoid, drawn up in nets and mixed together in a multitude of fish, thoroughly dried in fish-sauce, you eat with relish.

As for the wine of the Christians, show me by the Scriptures where it is forbidden to drink, and where we are forbidden to eat your unleavened bread. You will hear the prophet saying: Their feet are swift to shed blood. And again: Your hands are full of blood. And in Deuteronomy: Their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and their offshoot from Gomorrah. Their grape is a grape of gall, and their cluster of bitterness. Their wine is the wrath of dragons, the incurable wrath of asps. If, with so many and so great testimonies, Simon, you refuse to believe; you are opposing your own salvation. Read, Simon, Daniel, and you will find Nebuchadnezzar the barbarian: he himself acknowledged the Son of God, whom you are slow to recognize. Did we not cast three men into the furnace? Behold, I see four men, and the countenance of the fourth is like the Son of God. What do you say, O Jew?

Take heed lest there be fulfilled in you the rebuke of the prophet Habakkuk, saying: Behold, you despisers, and look, and be amazed; for I work a work in your days, which you will not believe, though one should declare it to you. Sim.—Bringer of salvation, Theophilus, good physician of the sick, I can delay no longer. Bid me be catechized, and be consecrated with the sign of the faith of Christ. For I believe that through the laying-on of your hands I may obtain the abolition of my sins: indeed, just as Jacob blessed, and by the laying-on of the hand received it, that the greater might come from the lesser; so Ephraim and Manasseh were enlarged by the laying-on of hands. Then Theophilus baptized Simon, and he obtained the faith. Simon began to give thanks to God, saying: I give you thanks, Jesus, whom I have not seen face to face, but now I believe in you in spirit and with my whole mind.

I give you thanks, Jesus, whom I have not heard, but now, having heard, I call upon you, Jesus, whose sense I did not have before. But now I desire that my understanding be in you, through whom I have come to know Theophilus your disciple. Lord Jesus Christ, if indeed I am worthy of your calling, confirm me. For you show the way to those who wander, and call back the lost, raise the dead, form the unbelieving in your faith, and enlighten the eyes of the heart of the blind. You are he who was with our fathers in the desert, you are the light of the lampstands; you are the altar, and the bread of the presence; you are the altar and the willing sacrifice; you are my very life, the pearl, the crystal, the silver yoke. I pray, Lord, do not remember the ignorance of my unhappiness: for you are one who bestows hidden benefits, who have deigned to show me all things.

To you be honor, power, praise, glory, now and unto all ages of ages. Amen.