selected through the sevenfold grace of the Spirit; moreover, twelve is produced from, seven—that is, the two parts of seven, four and three, when multiplied together give twelve." He also finds deep significance in the number of the apostles; this number being evidently determined by a multiplication of the number of persons in the Trinity by the number of quarters of the globe. Still, to do him justice, it must be said that in some parts of his exegesis the strong sense which was one of his most striking characteristics crops out in a way very refreshing. Thus, referring to a passage in the first chapter of Job, regarding the oxen which were plowing and the asses which were feeding beside them, he tells us pithily that these typify two classes of Christians: the oxen, the energetic Christians who do the work of the Church; the asses, the lazy Christians who merely feed.[1]
Thus began the vast theological structure of oracular interpretation applied to the Bible. As we have seen, the men who prepared the ground for it were the rabbis of Palestine and the Hellenized Jews of Alexandria; and the four great men who laid its foundation courses were Origen, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Gregory.
During the ten centuries following the last of these men, this structure continued to rise steadily above the plain meanings of Scripture. The Christian world rejoiced in it, and the few great thinkers who dared bring the truth to bear upon it were rejected. It did indeed seem at one period in the early Church that a better system might be developed. The School of Antioch, especially as represented by Chrysostom, appeared likely to lead in this better way, but the dominant forces were too strong; the passion for myth and marvel prevailed over the love of real knowledge, and the reasonings of Chrysostom and his compeers were neglected,[2]
In the ninth century came another effort to present the claims of right reason. The first man prominent in this was St.
- ↑ For Origen, see the De Principiis, Book IV, chaps, i-vii et seq., Crombie's translation; also the Contra Celsum, vi, 70; vii, 20, etc.; also various citations in Farrar. For Hilary, see his Tractatus super Psalmos, cap. ix, li, etc., in Migne, torn, ix, and De Trinitate, lib. ii, cap. ii. For Jerome's interpretation of the text relating to the Shunamite woman, see Epist. lii, in Migne, torn, xxii, pp. 527, 528. For Augustine's use of numbers, see the De Doctrina Christiana, lib. ii, cap. xvi, and for the explanation of the draught of fishes, see Augustine in Johan. Evangel., Tractat. cxxii, and on the twenty-five to thirty furlongs, ibid., xxv, sect. 6; and for the significance of the serpent eating dust, ibid., ii, 18. For the view that the drunkenness of Noah prefigured the suffering of Christ, as held by SS. Cyprian and Augustine, see Farrar, as above, pp. 181, 238. For St. Gregory, see the Magna Moralia, lib. i, cap. xiv.
- ↑ For the work of the School of Antioch, and especially of Chrysostom, see the eloquent tribute to it by Farrar, as above.
