St Athanasius the Great LETTERS, Part II, Complete

Translated by Cardinal Newman.

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Page 75

7. But we should like your piety to ask them this. When Israel was ordered to go up to Jerusalem to worship at the temple of the Lord, where was the ark, 'and above it the Cherubim of glory overshadowing the Mercy-seat [4767] ,' did they do well or the opposite? If they did ill, how came it that they who despised this law were liable to punishment? for it is written that if a man make light of it and go not up, he shall perish from among the people [4768] . But if they did well, and in this proved well-pleasing to God, are not the Arians, abominable and most shameful of any heresy, many times worthy of destruction, in that while they approve the former People for the honour paid by them to the Temple, they will not worship the Lord Who is in the flesh as in a temple? And yet the former temple was constructed of stones and gold, as a shadow. But when the reality came, the type ceased from thenceforth, and there did not remain, according to the Lord's utterance, one stone upon another that was not broken down [4769] . And they did not, when they saw the temple of stones, suppose that the Lord who spoke in the temple was a creature; nor did they set the Temple at nought and retire far off to worship. But they came to it according to the Law, and worshipped the God who uttered His oracles from the Temple. Since then this was so, how can it be other than right to worship the Body of the Lord, all-holy and all-reverend as it is, announced as it was by the archangel Gabriel, formed by the Holy Spirit, and made the Vesture of the Word? It was at any rate a bodily hand that the Word stretched out to raise her that was sick of a fever [4770] : a human voice that He uttered to raise Lazarus from the dead [4771] ; and, once again, stretching out His hands upon the Cross, He overthrew the prince of the power of the air, that now works [4772] in the sons of disobedience, and made the way clear for us into the heavens.

[4767] Heb. ix. 5.

[4768] Cf. Lev. xvii. 9; Num. ix. 13.

[4769] Matt. xxiv. 2.

[4770] Mark i. 31.

[4771] Joh. xi. 43.

[4772] Eph. ii. 2. Athan. here omits the tou pneumatos, thus increasing the difficulty of the gen. particp.

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