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Reply to Faustus the Manichaean

38.

But a pleasure which all must feel is obtained from this narrative so faithfully recorded in the Holy Scriptures, when we examine into the prophetic character of the action, and knock with pious faith and diligence at the door of the mystery, that the Lord may open, and show us who was prefigured in the ancient personage, and whose wife this is, who, while in a foreign land and among strangers, is not allowed to be stained or defiled, that she may be brought to her own husband without spot or wrinkle. Thus we find that the righteous life of the Church is for the glory of Christ, that her beauty may bring honor to her husband, as Abraham was honored on account of the beauty of Sara among the inhabitants of that foreign land. To the Church, to whom it is said in the Song of Songs, "O thou fairest among women," ¹ kings offer gifts in acknowledgment of her beauty; as king Abimelech offered gifts to Sara, admiring the grace of her appearance; all the more that, while he loved, he was not allowed to profane it. The holy Church, too is in secret the spouse of the Lord Jesus Christ. For it is secretly, and in the hidden depths of the Spirit, that the soul of man is joined to the word of God, so that they two are one flesh; of which the apostle speaks as a great mystery in marriage, as referring to Christ and the Church. ² Again, the earthly kingdom of this world, typified by the kings which were not allowed to defile Sara, had no knowledge or experience of the Church as the spouse of Christ, that is, of how faithfully she maintained her relation to her Husband, till it tried to violate her, and was compelled to yield to the divine testimony borne by the faith of the martyrs, and in the person of later monarchs was brought humbly to honor with gifts the Bride whom their predecessors had not been able to humble by subduing her to themselves. What, in the type, happened in the reign of one and the same king, is fulfilled in the earlier monarchs of this era and their successors.

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Contra Faustum Manichaeum libri triginta tres

38.

Iam vero in hac re gesta atque in divinis libris posita fideliterque narrata quem non delectet etiam factum propheticum perscrutari et sacramenti ostium pia fide studioque pulsare, ut aperiat dominus et ostendat, quis tunc in illo figurabatur viro et cuius sit uxor, quae in hac peregrinatione atque inter alienigenas pollui macularique non sinitur, ut sit viro suo sine macula et ruga ? In gloria quippe Christi recte vivit ecclesia, ut pulchritudo eius honori sit viro eius, sicut Abraham propter Sarae pulchritudinem inter alienigenas honorabatur; eique ipsi, cui dicitur in canticis canticorum: O pulchra inter mulieres, ipsius pulchritudinis merito reges offerunt munera, sicut Sarae obtulit rex Abimelech plus in ea mirans formae decus, quod amare potuit et violare non potuit. p. 632,2 Est enim et sancta ecclesia domino Iesu Christo in occulto uxor. Occulte quippe atque intus in abscondito secreto spiritali anima humana inhaeret verbo dei, ut sint duo in carne una, quod magnum coniugii sacramentum in Christo et in ecclesia commendat apostolus. Proinde regnum terrenum saeculi huius, cuius figuram gerebant reges, qui Saram polluere permissi non sunt, non expertum est nec invenit ecclesiam coniugem Christi, id est, quam fideliter illi tamquam principio viro suo subdita cohaereret, nisi cum violare temptavit et divino testimonio per fidem martyrum cessit correptumque in posterioribus regibus honoravit munere, quam correptioni suae subdere in prioribus non evaluit. p. 6232,14 Nam quod tunc in eodem rege prius et posterius figuratum est, hoc in isto regno prioribus et posterioribus regibus adimpletum.