Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Turning there to his disciples, he says "Woe" to the author of stumbling-blocks, saying it would have been better for him if he had never been born, or if a millstone had been hung about his neck and he had been pitched into the deep, than that he should cause one of these little ones—his disciples, that is—to stumble. Consider what a punishment he is threatening that man with. And indeed no one else is going to avenge the wronging of his disciples but he. [2] Recognize, then, both the judge and the very feeling with which he pronounces this care for his own—the same feeling the Creator once had: "Whoever touches you touches the apple of my eye." It is one and the same sentiment. He commands that a sinning brother be rebuked; whoever fails to do this has certainly done wrong himself, either out of hatred wanting his brother to persist in his fault, or out of favoritism sparing him—having Leviticus before him: "You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall reprove, yes reprove, your neighbor"—your brother, of course—"and you shall not bear sin because of him." [3] No wonder he teaches this, seeing that he also forbids you to look away and neglect bringing back even your brother's stray animals if you find them wandering on the road, let alone your brother himself. But he also commands you to grant your brother pardon when he sins against you—even seventy times seven. And that is little enough. For the Creator goes further: he sets no limit at all, declaring without end, "Do not remember your brother's malice," and he commands you to grant this not only to the one who asks but even to the one who does not ask. For he does not want you merely to forgo pressing the offense, but to forget it. [4] As for the law concerning lepers—how much interpretation it calls for regarding the particular species of the affliction and the high priest's inspection of it—this is something we must know for ourselves, in order to throw Marcion's own touchiness about the law back at him, since here too he will claim Christ as its rival, anticipating the law's own solemn rites even in the healing of the ten lepers. These he simply instructed to present themselves before the priests, and along the way he cleansed them, without a touch even then and without a word, by silent power and sheer will alone; [5] as if it were necessary, once the healer of sicknesses and vices has been announced as Christ and proven by his effects, to go back and quibble over the manner of his cures, or to summon the Creator before Christ's bar of the law, on the ground that Christ accomplished on his own something other than what the law had prescribed—when in fact it stands to reason that the Lord operates one way through himself or through the Son, and another way through the prophets, his servants, giving especially those demonstrations of power and virtue which, being more brilliant and more forceful precisely because they are his own, must rightly be set apart from those given through deputies. But things of this sort have already been said elsewhere, in an earlier proof. [6] Now, even though he has stated beforehand that lepers abounded throughout Israel during the time of the prophet Elisha, and that not one of them was cleansed apart from Naaman the Syrian, that hardly amounts to a difference between two gods, to the destruction of the Creator who cured only one and to the elevation of him who cleansed ten. For who will doubt that more could be cured by one who had cured even a single man than by one who, ten times over, had never before cured even one? [7] But by this very declaration he is chiefly striking at Israel's lack of faith, or rather its arrogance, in that though many lepers were there and a prophet was not lacking, even after the proof had been given, not one of them ran to the God who was working through the prophets. So then, since he himself was the true high priest of God the Father, he examined them according to the hidden meaning of the law, signifying that Christ is the true examiner and refiner of human blemishes. And what stood in the open text of the law he also enjoined: "Go, present yourselves before the priests." Why, if he was going to cleanse them before they arrived? As though mocking the law, so as to show, once they were healed along the way, that the law amounted to nothing, priests and all? [8] Well, let that be as it will, if to anyone Christ is going to look so much like a schemer. Rather, we ought to interpret this in the way most worthy of him and most fitting to faith: they were healed precisely because, in accordance with the law's command to go off to the priests, they obeyed; for it is not credible that observers of the law should earn healing from a destroyer of the law. But why did he give the leper of old no such command? Because Elisha gave none such to Naaman the Syrian either; and yet that does not mean he was not acting for the Creator even so. I have answered enough; but whoever has faith understands something deeper still. [9] So learn the reasons too. The business was taking place in the territory of Samaria, whence, incidentally, came one of the lepers. Now Samaria had broken away from Israel, having that schism arising from the nine tribes which Jeroboam, torn away through the prophet Ahijah, had settled at Samaria. But the Samaritans were also otherwise always pleased with themselves over the mountains and wells of their fathers, as in the Gospel of John, where that Samaritan woman says in conversation with the Lord at the well: "Surely you are not greater than...", [10] and so on; and again: "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that one must worship at Jerusalem." And so he who through Amos had said, "Woe to those who trust in the mountain of Samaria," now deigns of set purpose to restore that very region, ordering the Samaritan to show himself to the priests—priests who of course existed nowhere but where the temple was—thereby subordinating the Samaritan to the Jew, since salvation is from the Jews, though both Israelites and Samaritans exist. For the whole promise made to the tribe of Judah was Christ; so that they might know that at Jerusalem was to be found both priests and temple and the very source and fountainhead of religion—a spring of salvation, not a mere well. [11] And so, once he saw that they acknowledged the law which was to be discharged at Jerusalem, he healed them, already to be justified by faith apart from the law's order. Hence too, marveling at that one man loosed from the ten, the Samaritan mindful of the grace he had received from God, he issues no command that the man present the offering the law prescribes, because he had already offered something sufficient, rendering glory to God—this too being, by the Lord's own will, an interpretation of the law. And yet to which god did the Samaritan render thanks, when not even the Israelite up to that point had learned of any other god? To whom else but to him by whom all had earlier been healed—Christ? And so he heard, "Your faith has saved you," because he had understood that he owed a true offering—that is, an act of thanksgiving—to the true almighty God, in his genuine sanctuary and before Christ, his genuine high priest. [12] Nor again can the Pharisees be thought to have consulted the Lord about the coming of some other god's kingdom, seeing that no god other than Christ had yet been brought forward, nor can he be thought to have answered about any kingdom but the one concerning which he was being consulted. "The kingdom of God," he says, "does not come with observation, nor will they say, 'Look, here it is,' or 'There it is'; for take note, the reign of God is inside you." Who will fail to read this as meaning: "inside you"—that is, within your grasp, in your own power, provided you listen, provided you do what God commands? [13] But if the kingdom of God consists in a commandment, then set against this, according to our method of antitheses, the words of Moses, and it is one and the same sentence. "The commandment," he says, "is not too high, nor far from you. It is not up in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will climb up to heaven and carry it down so we can listen to it and keep it?' Nor is it across the sea, that you should say, 'Who will sail across the sea and bring it back so we can listen to it and keep it?' No—the word is close beside you, in your mouth, in your heart, and in your hands, ready to be kept." This comes to the same thing as: "Not there, nor there either; for take note, the reign of God is inside you." [14] And lest heretical impudence argue that the Lord answered them about the kingdom of the Creator—the one about which he was being asked—rather than about his own, what follows stands against it. For in saying that the Son of man must endure much suffering and rejection first, before that coming of his in which the kingdom will be tangibly revealed, he shows that it was his own kingdom he had been speaking of when he answered, since it looked forward to his own sufferings and rejection. As for being rejected, and afterward being acknowledged and taken up and exalted, he drew that very word "rejected" from the place where, under the riddle of the stone, both his revelations were sung of by David—the first to be refused, the second to be honored. [15] "The stone," he says, "which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner: this was the Lord's doing." For it would be pointless, if we believed that God prophesied about someone's disgrace or, equally, someone's glory, without that prophecy pointing to the very one he had already foreshadowed under the figure of a stone, a rock, and a mountain. But if this passage speaks of his own coming, why does the gentle and mild one liken it to the harsh, dreadful days of Noah and Lot? Why does he tell them to remember Lot's wife, who did not despise the Creator's command with impunity, unless he comes with a judgment to avenge his own commands? [16] Even granting that he avenges as that other one does—if he judges me—he ought not to have shaped his own proofs on the model of the one he is destroying, lest he seem to be shaping himself after me. But if here too he is not speaking of his own coming but of the Jews' coming for their Christ, let us even now wait and see whether he proclaims anything of his own, meanwhile believing him to be the very one he everywhere proclaims.
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