Jeremiah

" So too through Jeremiah:

"And he is man," says Jeremiah, "and who shall know him?

" We indeed, certain that Christ always spoke in the prophets — the Spirit, namely, of the Creator, as the prophet testifies, "The person of our spirit, Christ the Lord," who from the beginning, the vicar of the Father, was both heard and seen in God's name — we know that those very utterances were his, reproaching Israel even then with the things they were foretold to commit against him:

For well is it written in Jeremiah:

And down to this time Jeremiah continues prophesying;

And in the time of Sedekias too there still prophesy Jeremiah and Ambacum;

For "the gods," it says, "who did not make heaven and earth, let them be taken away, and let them be cast beneath the earth," and, "All the gods of the nations are demons.

rather, in the case of women we find much strictness, the Apostle saying, "He that is joined to a harlot is one body," and Jeremiah, "If a wife belong to another man, she shall not return to her husband, but being defiled she shall be defiled," and again, "He that keeps an adulteress is foolish and impious.

Concerning Jechoniah, whom the prophet Jeremiah says was made an outcast from the land of Judaea when he said, 'Jechoniah was dishonoured like a vessel for which there is no use,' and that he was cast out, both he and his seed, and there shall not rise from his seed one sitting on the throne of David, a ruler in Judah—the explanation is plain and clear.

For just as the carnal circumcision, which was temporary, was instilled as a sign to a stubborn people, so the spiritual circumcision was given for salvation to an obedient people, the prophet Jeremiah saying:

Come, let us cast wood into his bread, and let us wear him away from the land of the living, and his name shall be remembered no more.

Jeremiah says:

Let Herod too be a better man, lest Jeremiah have cause to glory.

" And Jeremiah:

preferring repentance, but also charging Jeremiah not to intercede for a sinful people.

"For the old things have passed away," according to Isaiah, "and the renewing is now renewed," according to Jeremiah;

" He too remembered that Jeremiah was forbidden by God to entreat for a people committing mortal offences.

"For the Lord who made the earth in his strength," as Jeremiah says, "set up the world in his wisdom.

For when that prophet was interrogated by the king, respecting the event of the siege, he prudently, in compliance with the king’s orders, concealed the real matter from the nobles, assigning a different, though not a false reason for the conference, which he had had.

For thus too Jeremiah commends him:

the Scripture interpreting from outside that they did not know what he had said about the Father — when in fact they ought to have known that the words of the Father were in the Son, by reading in Jeremiah, "And the Lord said to me, Behold I have given my words in your mouth";

So too you read the voice of God to Jeremiah:

But indeed Jeremiah, when he says, And I will gather them from the ends of the earth on a feast day, signifies the day of the Passover and of Pentecost, which is properly a feast day.

What are these figures in Isaiah, what images in David, what riddles in Jeremiah — when not even His mighty works were uttered through parables?

" Against whom both Ezekiel and Jeremiah inveigh with the same threats, because they not only feed unworthily on the flock, feeding rather themselves, but also scatter the flock and make it to be a prey to all the beasts of the field, while there is no shepherd for them.

the tyrant's wise men are spared, God is glorified, Daniel is honoured—and one who afterward, too, was to bring God no smaller grace, in the first year of king Darius, when, from reconsidering the times foretold by Jeremiah, "he set his face to God in fastings and sackcloth and ashes.

David is harassed, Elias put to flight, Jeremiah stoned, Isaiah sawn asunder, Zechariah butchered between the altar and the temple, assigning to the flints the perennial stains of his own gore.