Daniel (ix) prays for the deliverance of the people from the captivity of
their enemies. But he was thinking of sins, and, to show this, he says that
Gabriel came to tell him that his prayer was heard, and that there were only
seventy weeks to wait, after which the people would be freed from iniquity,
sin would have an end, and the Redeemer, the Holy of Holies, would bring
eternal justice, not legal, but eternal.
SECTION XI: THE PROPHECIES
693. When I see the blindness and the wretchedness of man, when I regard the
whole silent universe and man without light, left to himself and, as it
were, lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who has put him
there, what he has come to do, what will become of him at death, and
incapable of all knowledge, I become terrified, like a man who should be
carried in his sleep to a dreadful desert island and should awake without
knowing where he is and without means of escape. And thereupon I wonder how
people in a condition so wretched do not fall into despair. I see other
persons around me of a like nature. I ask them if they are better informed
than I am. They tell me that they are not. And thereupon these wretched and
lost beings, having looked around them and seen some pleasing objects, have
given and attached themselves to them. For my own part, I have not been able
t
Is. 44:20-24; 54:8; 63:12-17; 66:17. Jer. 2:35; 4:22-24; 5:4, 29-31; 6:16;
22:15-17.
683. Types.--The letter kills. All happened in types. Here is the cipher
which Saint Paul gives us. Christ must suffer. An humiliated God.
Circumcision of the heart, true fasting, true sacrifice, a true temple. The
prophets have shown that all these must be spiritual.
Not the meat which perishes, but that which does not perish.
"Ye shall be free indeed." Then the other freedom was only a type of
freedom.
"I am the true bread from Heaven."
684. Contradiction.--We can only describe a good character by reconciling
all contrary qualities, and it is not enough to keep up a series of
harmonious qualities, without reconciling contradictory ones. To understand
the meaning of an author, we must make all the contrary passages agree.
Thus, to understand Scripture, we must have a meaning in which all the
contrary passages are reconciled. It is not enough to have one which suits
many concurring passages; but it is necessary to have one which reconciles
even contradictory passages.
Every author has a meaning in which all the contradictory passages agree, or
he has no meaning at all. We cannot affirm the latter of Scripture and the
prophets; they undoubtedly are full of good sense. We must, then, seek for a
meaning which reconciles all discrepancies.
The true meaning, then, is not that of the Jews; but in Jesus Christ all the
contradictions are reconciled.
The Jews could not reconcile the cessation of the royalty and principality,
foretold by Hosea, with the prophecy of Jacob.
If we take the law, the sacrifices, and the kingdom as realities, we cannot
reconcile all the passages. They must then necessarily be only types. We
cannot even reconcile the passages of the same author, nor of the same book,
nor sometimes of the same chapter, wh