Re: !!! SOFTWARE 4 SALE !!!*********************************************** *********************** 33785

the books which testify of Him, and state that He will be an
offence and rejected. Therefore they have shown it was He by rejecting Him,
and He has been alike proved both by the righteous Jews who received Him and
by the unrighteous who rejected Him, both facts having been foretold.

Wherefore the prophecies have a hidden and spiritual meaning to which this
people were hostile, under the carnal meaning which they loved. If the
spiritual meaning had been revealed, they would not have loved it, and,
unable to bear it, they would not have been zealous of the preservation of
their books and their ceremonies; and if they had loved these spiritual
promises, and had preserved them incorrupt till the time of the Messiah,
their testimony would have had no force, because they had been his friends.

Therefore it was well that the spiritual meaning should be concealed; but,
on the other hand, if this meaning had been so hidden as not to appear at
all, it could not have served as a proof of the Messiah. What then was done?
In a crowd of passages it has been hidden under the temporal meaning, and in
a few been clearly revealed; besides that, the time and the state of the
world have been so clearly foretold that it is clearer than the sun. And in
some places this spiritual meaning is so clearly expressed that it would
require a blindness, like that which the flesh imposes on the spirit when it
is subdued by it, not to recognise it.

See, then, what has been the prudence of God. This meaning is concealed
under another in an infinite number of passages, and in some, though rarely,
it is revealed; but yet so that the passages in which it is concealed are
equivocal and can suit both meanings; whereas the passages wh