If the intention of the Lord were not fulfilled and if his wrath had not remained on the head of the wicked,^[1] the Lord of all could not be the God of the tribes of Israel. But he addressed this only to the remnant who were saved. And if the objection should be posed to us that he said, I will be the God of the Israelite race or of all the tribes of Israel, we would cite, If you were children of Abraham, you would do the works of your father,^[2] as well as the apostle, who wrote, Consider Israel according to the flesh,^[3] which implies that there is another Israel according to the Spirit. They are Israel, therefore, who discern God with the mind or who remain most steadfast in the Lord. In this way, Israel will be the people of God.

The remnant of the people of Israel are gathered through the apostles and apostolic people, about whom we read above guardians will call on the mountain and to whom it was commanded to sing and resound, that the remnant of Israel might be saved. The Lord also promises that he will bring them down from the north country, he who is the most severe wind but is called the right hand,^[1] due to unbelief and the frigidity of his love. He also promises to gather them from the ends of the earth in no time other than the paschal solemnity, that is, in the days of the Lord’s passion, when the Lord was crucified and when the gospel promise was fulfilled: When I am lifted up, I will draw everyone to me.^[2] At that moment, he generated many people, fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy: a people is born in one moment,^[3] for on one day, three thousand and five thousand people believed.^[4] It is also written in Hebrew, among whom were the blind, the lame, the pregnant and women in labor together, a great gathering of those returning here.

When Jeremiah says, And I will gather them together from the extremities of the land in the feast day, he signifies the day of the Passover and of Pentecost, which is properly a feast day.^[1] However, every day is the Lord’s. Every hour, every time, is apt for baptism. If there is a difference in the solemnity, there is no distinction in the grace.

The calling of the nations is demonstrated clearly when Scripture says, Hear the word of the Lord, nations, and announce it to the distant coastlands. What do they announce to the distant coastlands? They announce that the same Lord who scattered Israel will gather him, showing that it was never in the power of his enemies to scatter Israel, but only in the will of the Lord, and guard Israel as a shepherd guards his flock, since the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep,^[1] for the Lord redeemed Jacob with his own precious blood and freed him from the hands of those who were more powerful or stronger. . . . They will come, it continues, no doubt referring to those who were liberated from the hand of the powerful, and praise their liberator on Mount Zion, that is, in the church, and stream to the goodness of the Lord of all abundance, which is known not in the fruits and foods of this flesh but in a diversity of virtues.

Ramah belonged to the tribe of Benjamin, and the tomb of Rachel is in the hippodrome of Chaphratha on the way to Ephrath.^[1] While the prophecy had its fulfillment in the time of Herod the Great, who did away with the babies in the hope of doing away at the same time with the newborn Savior,^[2] the prophet places it here in the context of the promise of good things so as to emphasize that the birth of our Lord and Savior according to the flesh was the real good and the summit of salvation, though on account of it the babies met that unjust end.

Thus says the Lord: A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, sobbing and weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children. In a historical sense this prophecy speaks about sons of Judah and Benjamin living in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Jeremiah later on describes the fulfillment of this prophecy, saying that tribes of Judah and Benjamin were sent to Ramah, the city of Benjamin’s tribe, and then they were sent to captivity in Babylon.^[1] But in a spiritual sense, these words were fulfilled when Herod killed infants in Ephrathah and in its suburbs. It was said that Rachel was crying in Bethlehem and her voice was heard in Ramah because her body was buried in Bethlehem. But the people of Bethlehem were captured and sent to Ramah, and from there they had to go into a foreign land, to Babylon. It is why the prophet comforts mothers of killed infants when referring to Rachel.

Herod sought him after his birth. He was to kill all the children in that place. And the prophet revealed this, too, foretelling it long beforehand when he said, A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, mourning and much weeping, of Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are not. The Scriptures also predicted that he would come to Egypt when they said, Out of Egypt I called my son.^[1]

What need have I to study the rising and the setting of the stars, and at their rising plough up and pierce the fallow ground with hard ploughshares or at their setting cut the fruitful crop? One star means more to me than all the others, the bright morning star at whose rising was sown not the seed of grain but the seed of martyrs, that time when Rachel wept for her children to offer for Christ her babies washed with her tears. The setting of that star brought back in triumph from the tomb not the unfeeling relics of funeral piles but bands of the living, who had been dead.

Today we are celebrating the feast of all those infants who, the Gospel text tells us, were killed by King Herod, and for this reason our land, the fruitful mother of heavenly soldiers and such great virtues, should rejoice with the greatest exultation. Behold, the wicked enemy could never have helped the blessed infants as much by submission as he did by his hatred. As today’s most sacred feast shows us, the grace of benediction shone forth in the blessed infants as much as cruelty against them abounded. For we heard a little while ago that when King Herod was pursuing Christ, thousands of happy boys were killed. As the prophet said, Rachel mourns her children; she refuses to be consoled because her children are no more. The blessed mother of the triumphant, the land of illustrious warriors, rich in children, for a short time seemed to the eyes of the foolish to be bereaved. But she never was in need of consolation, nor did she bewail the sons whom she acquired with enviable sorrows, even while she lost them. Blessed are you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, who suffered the cruelty of King Herod in the death of your sons and at the same time merited to offer to God a white-clad group of peaceable, sinless infants.

According to the oracle of Jeremiah, A voice was heard in Ramah, that is, on high, of lamentation and great wailing. This clearly denotes that holy church’s mourning, by which it grieves for the violent death of its members, does not, as our enemies foolishly claim, pass away into a void, but it ascends right to the throne of the heavenly judge.

Let us purify ourselves by tears, that the Lord our God may hear us when we lament, as he heard Ephraim when weeping, as it is written: I have surely heard Ephraim weeping. He expressly repeats the words of Ephraim: You have chastised me, and I was chastised; like a calf I was not trained. For a calf shows itself off and leaves its stall, and so Ephraim was untrained like a calf far away from the stall, because he had forsaken the stall of the Lord, followed Jeroboam and worshiped the calves, which future event was prophetically indicated through Aaron, namely, that the people of the Jews would fall after this manner. And so repenting, Ephraim says, Turn me, and I shall be turned, for you are the Lord my God. Surely in the end of my captivity I repented, and after I learned I mourned over the days of confusion and subjected myself to you because I received reproach and made you known.

Let us, then, submit ourselves to God and not be subject to sin, and when we ponder the remembrance of our offenses, let us blush as though at some disgrace and not speak of them as a glory to us, as some boast of overcoming modesty or putting down the feeling of justice. Let our conversion be such that we who did not know God may now ourselves declare him to others, that the Lord, moved by such a conversion on our part, may answer to us: Ephraim is from youth a dear son, a pleasant child, for since my words are concerning him, I will truly remember him; therefore have I hastened to be over him. I will surely have mercy on him, says the Lord.^[1] And what mercy he promises us, the Lord also shows, when he says further on: I have satiated every thirsty soul and have satisfied every hungry soul. Therefore, I woke up and beheld, and my sleep was sweet to me. We observe that the Lord promises his sacraments to those who sin. Let us, then, all be converted to the Lord.

THE LORD JESUS SAID, NOW MY SOUL IS TROUBLED.^[1] For he who took on our infirmities also took on our feelings. He was sad even to death, but not by reason of death. For the death that was freely chosen could not have held sorrow. In it was the future joy of all people and the refreshment of all. Concerning it the Scripture said, in another passage, And I rose up and saw, and sleep became pleasant to me. Good is the sleep that has made the hungry not to hunger and the thirsty not to thirst and has prepared for them the pleasant savor of the mysteries. How then was Christ’s soul troubled when he made the souls of others not to fear? He was sad, then, even to death, until grace should be fulfilled. This is proved by his testimony as he speaks of his death, I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am until it is accomplished.^[2]

Will you be able to persuade anyone that, by receiving those who lapsed, the entire church has fallen? That the party of those who receive them back has become like someone who denies the faith because they admit penitents? But even if a congregation somehow has been too lenient, have other congregations who did not approve of their actions but rather followed convention and kept communion, also lost the name Christian? Hear the voice of Jeremiah! In those days they shall not say, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ But each one shall die for his own sin.

It is similarly impossible, he says, for children to be called to account for ancestral sins, because I promise to children the greatest blessings even when their parents sin.

Finally, that we may not be disturbed by the words I have quoted and many others of like importance, about returning the sins of the parents on the children—words written truthfully, yet that might be thought contrary to this prophecy—he solves this very vexed question by adding, Behold, the days shall come, says the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their ancestors.^[1] In this new covenant through the blood of the Mediator, the paternal decree having been cancelled, humankind by rebirth begins to be no longer subject to the paternal debts that bind them at birth, as the Mediator says: And call no one on earth your father,^[2] inasmuch as we but shall live forever with the Father.

Nowhere, or hardly anywhere, except in this passage of the prophet, do we find in the Old Testament Scriptures any mention so made of the New Testament as to indicate it by its name. It is no doubt often referred to and foretold as about to be given, but not so plainly as to have its name mentioned. Consider, then, carefully what difference God has testified as existing between the two Testaments—the old covenant and the new.

From the prophets I will prove that the Old and New Covenants have one Lawgiver. And so, what does Jeremiah say? I will give you a new covenant. Do you see Jeremiah’s prophetic reference to a new covenant that shines forth brilliantly for so many years before Christ’s coming? I will give you a new covenant. But how does it seem that he gave even the Old? When he said, I will give you a new covenant, he added, not like the covenant that I gave to your ancestors.

All things therefore are of one and the same substance, that is, from one and the same God, just as the Lord says to the disciples, Therefore every scribe who is instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings forth out of his treasure things new and old.^[1] He did not teach that the one who brought forth the old was one while the person who brought forth the new was another. Rather, he taught that they were one and the same. For the Lord is the good man of the house who rules the entire house of his Father and who delivers a law suited both for slaves and those who are as yet undisciplined. He provides fitting precepts to those who are free and have been justified by faith, as well as throwing his own inheritance open to those who are sons and daughters. And he called his disciples scribes and teachers of the kingdom of heaven of whom also he elsewhere says to the Jews, Behold, I send to you wise men, and scribes and teachers; and some of them you shall kill and persecute from city to city.^[2] Now, without contradiction, he means by those things that are brought forth from the treasure new and old—the two covenants. The old concerns that giving of the law that took place formerly. He points out the new as being that manner of life required by the gospel, of which David says, Sing to the Lord a new song.^[3]. . . And Jeremiah says, Behold, I will make a new covenant, not as I made with your ancestors in Mount Horeb. But one and the same householder produced both covenants, the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who spoke with Abraham and Moses, and who has again restored us to liberty and has multiplied that grace that is from himself.

Don’t you see how their reasoning comes around to the very contrary? The God of the old covenant, whom they call cruel, will be found mild and meek. The God of the new, whom they acknowledged to be good, will be hard and grievous, according to their madness. But we say that there is but one and the same Legislator of both covenants, who dispensed all correctly and adapted to the difference of the times the difference between the two systems of law. Therefore the first commandments are not cruel, nor are the second hard and grievous, but all come from one and the same providential care. Hear the affirmation of the prophet that God gave the old covenant also, or rather (so we must speak), the affirmation of him who is both the one and the other: I will make a covenant with you, not according to the covenant that I made with your ancestors.

He conveyed to us, of course, many prophecies on the same point: first, that there is one Lawgiver for the two covenants; then, the incompleteness of the former covenant, since there would be no need for the second one if the former had been adequate.

Because of the offense of the old Adam, which was by no means healed by the law that commanded and threatened, it is called the old covenant. The other is called the new covenant, because of the newness of the spirit that heals the new Adam of the fault of the old. Then consider what follows, and see in how clear a light the fact is placed, that people who have faith are unwilling to trust in themselves: Because, says he, this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days, says the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts.

For we find in the Scriptures, as the Lord says, Behold, I make with you a new covenant, not as I made with your ancestors in Mount Horeb. He made a new covenant with us. For what belonged to the Greeks and Jews is old. But we, who worship him in a new way, in the third form, are Christians. For clearly, as I think, he showed that the one and only God was known by the Greeks in a Gentile way, by the Jews Judaically and in a new and spiritual way by us.

Learn, all of you—learn! What better law of God is there, after all, than the holy gospel? It is the law of the New Testament, about which you heard, when the prophet was read, Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, I will perfect on the house of Jacob a new testament, not like the testament that I laid down for their ancestors when I led them from the land of Egypt. The testament (or covenant) is promised there, delivered here. It is promised through the prophet, delivered through the Lord of the prophets.

But I, he says, hold on to what God handed over to Moses. Listen to what God says through the prophet. What is God telling Jeremiah? Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, I will confirm on the house of Jacob a new covenant. Leave the old aside, take up the new, and you can see that you ought to leave aside circumcision, and unleavened bread taken literally, and the sabbath taken literally and the sacrifices taken literally. Listen to how the new covenant is promised: Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, I will confirm for them a new covenant, not like the covenant that I gave to their ancestors when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, when the law of commandments was given, when the people were led through the desert. It is not like that that I will give the new covenant. So do not go on wearing the old tunic. That was what crucified Christ. Your parent crucified him; you hate him. He by his own hand, you in your heart, both of you have carried out the crime. Therefore be displeased with what your parent did, and listen to what your Lord has done.

The number seven has gone. The number eight has come. Yesterday is gone. Today has come. That is the promised day on which we have been warned to hear and follow God’s Word. The day of the Old Testament is gone. The new day has come in which the New Testament is made perfect, of which Jeremiah says, Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their ancestors, in that day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. He adds the reason why the covenant was changed: They did not abide by my covenant, and I did not regard them, says the Lord.^[1]

There was a law before, and there is a law now: The law of the Spirit of life has delivered me.^[1] There was worship before, and there is worship now: Whose worship, Paul says, and again, Who serve God in spirit.^[2] There was a covenant before, and there is a covenant now: I will make a new covenant with you, not according to the covenant that I made with your ancestors. There was holiness before, and there is holiness now. There was a baptism before, and there is a baptism now. There was a sacrifice before, and there is a sacrifice now. There was a temple before, and there is a temple now. There was a circumcision before, and there is a circumcision now. So also there was grace before, and there is a grace now. But the first-named as types, and the others as the reality, have kept the same name but not the same meaning. Thus, even in pictures and images one that is done in black and white shades is said to be a person, and likewise one that has been done in realistic colors. Similarly, in the case of statues, both the gold one and clay one are called statues, but the one as a model, the other as the real statue.

For the grace of the law, which has passed away, we have received the abiding grace of the gospel, and, instead of the shadows and figures of the ancient covenant, truth has come by Jesus Christ. Jeremiah also prophesies in the person of God: Behold, the days shall come, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their ancestors, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. Notice what he says, that it is not to the people of the Gentiles, with whom he had not previously made a covenant, but to the people of the Jews, to whom he had given the law by Moses, that he promises the new covenant of the gospel, so that they might no longer live according to the ancient letter but in the newness of the Spirit.

When Israel was led out of the land of Egypt, God was intimate only with that people, such that it could be said that he took them by the hand and made a covenant with them, which they then violated and were therefore neglected by the Lord. Now, however, it is promised in the gospel that after the cross, resurrection and ascension, the covenant will be written not on stone tablets but on tablets of embodied hearts,^[1] since the testament of the Lord was to be written on the minds of believers, he being God dwelling in them and they a people in him, so that they would never again seek Jewish teachers and traditions and human commandments^[2] but would be taught instead by the Holy Spirit, provided that they are worthy to hear: You are God’s temple, and the Spirit of God dwells in you.^[3] But the Spirit blows where he wills^[4] and has various graces and is himself the possession of the knowledge of the God of all virtue. And I will forgive their iniquities, and I will not remember their sins any more, he says. From this, it is clear, according to the proper knowledge of the reading above, that this must be understood of the Savior’s first coming, when both the people of Israel and Judah were joined together. Should anyone worry, however, about why it says I will make a new covenant—or testament—with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with your ancestors, he should first understand that the church of Christ came to everyone from the Jews and, moreover, that the Lord Savior said, I came only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.^[5]

Isn’t the finger of God to be understood as being the Holy Spirit? Read the gospel, and see that where one Evangelist has the Lord saying, If I with the Spirit of God cast out demons,^[1] another says, If I with the finger of God cast out demons.^[2] So if that law too was written by the finger of God, that is by the Spirit of God, the Spirit by which Pharaoh’s magicians were defeated, so they said, This is the finger of God.^[3] So if that law too, indeed because that law too was composed by the Spirit of God, that is, by the finger of God, why can it not be said of it, For the law of the Spirit of life in Jesus Christ has delivered you from the law of sin and death? . . . So, the law of the Spirit of life, written on the heart, not on stone, in Christ Jesus, in whose person was celebrated the ultimately real and genuine Passover has delivered you from the law of sin and death.^[4]

What are you asking about, you see, is what special thing God is keeping for the good, if he generously bestows so many things on both good and bad. When I said, What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it come up into the heart of people,^[1] there is no lack of people to say, Can you think what it is? Here is what it is that God is keeping for the good alone, though it is he who has made them good. Here is what it is. Our reward has been very briefly defined by the prophet: I will be their God, and they shall be my people. I will be their God. He has promised us himself as our reward.

God is the reward, in him the end, in him the perfection of happiness, in him the sum of the blessed and eternal life. For after saying, I will be their God, and they shall be my people, he at once adds, And they shall no more teach everyone his neighbor, and everyone his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know me, from the least to the greatest of them.

Here, God is Jerusalem’s reward. Its highest—its entire—good is to possess him and to be possessed by him.

I have acted thus, not as a finished master but as one needing to be perfected with his pupils, excellent lady, daughter deservedly honored and cherished in Christ. Indeed, even in the subjects that, one way or another, I know, I am more anxious for you to be learned than to be in need of my learning, for we ought not to desire the ignorance of others in order to teach what we know. It surely is much better for all of us to be ready to be taught of God what will certainly be perfected in that country on high when the promise will be fulfilled in us, that a person shall not say to his neighbor, Know the Lord, for all shall know him, as it is written, from the least of them even to the greatest.

You should not write the creed out in any way, but, so as to hold the exact words of the creed, learn it by listening. Not even when you have learned it should you write it down, but, rather, always hold it and cherish it in your memory. For whatever you will hear in the creed is contained in the inspired books of the Holy Scriptures. The fact that it is not permitted to write down what has been thus collected and reduced to a definite form comes about in memory of the promise of God in which, predicting a New Testament, he said in the words of the prophet: This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord, by setting my law in their minds, I will write it also in their hearts.

It was probable, however, that the holy apostles would perhaps think these things difficult to put into practice. Therefore he who knows all things takes the natural law of self-love as the arbiter of what any one would wish to obtain from another. Treat others, he says, such as you wish them to treat you. If you would have them harsh and unfeeling, fierce and wrathful, revengeful and ill-disposed, treat them this way. But if, on the contrary, you would have them kind and forgiving, do not think it a thing intolerable to be so yourselves. And in the case of those so disposed, the law is perhaps unnecessary, because God writes on our hearts the knowledge of his will. For in those days, says the Lord, I will surely give my laws into their minds and will write them on their hearts.

The future life achieves the fulfillment of these words. In that life we shall no longer need instruction from one another, since everything will be patently obvious. Sufferings will be at an end, bodies will be incorruptible, souls will be immune to change. Now it is customary with the divine Scripture to mix prophecies together. It connects prophecies about his repeated call to Israel with those about the captivity, and the Lord in the sacred Gospels cites at the one time the sayings about Jerusalem and those about the consummation.

Consider how easy it is for people to obey. For Jeremiah said, They shall no more teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying: ‘Know the Lord.’ For all men will know me from the least of them to the greatest. And Isaiah showed how indestructible the Church would be. For in the last days the mountain of the Lord will be conspicuous, and the house of the Lord will be on top of the mountains and will be exalted above the hills. And to this mountaintop will come many peoples and many nations.^[1]

Let me beg you to consider then this simple and single-hearted person^[1] and take notice of him in the affairs of life, and you will see him a pattern of the utmost scrupulousness, such that if he would have shown it in spiritual matters he would not have been overlooked. The facts of the truth are clearer than the sun. And wherever a person may go, he might easily lay hold of his own salvation, if he wanted to, that is, to be obedient and not to look on this as a byproduct. For were these events confined to Palestine or to a little corner of the world? Didn’t you hear the prophet say, All shall know me, from the least even to the greatest?

If we are asked why we do not worship God as the Hebrew ancestors of the Old Testament worshiped him, we reply that God has taught us differently by the New Testament fathers, and yet not in opposition to the Old Testament, but as that Testament itself predicted. For it is thus foretold by the prophet Jeremiah . . . that that covenant would not continue but that there would be a new one. And to the objection that we do not belong to the house of Israel or to the house of Judah, we answer according to the teaching of the apostle, who calls Christ the seed of Abraham and says to us, as belonging to Christ’s body, Therefore you are Abraham’s seed.

You do not say, Let man be made, but, Let us make man. Nor do you say, after his kind, but after our image and likeness. Because, being renewed in his mind and beholding and apprehending your truth, a person does not need another person as his director so that he may imitate his own kind. By your direction he proves what your good, acceptable and perfect will is. You teach him—now that he has been made capable—to perceive the Trinity of the Unity and the Unity of the Trinity. Therefore this being said in the plural, Let us make man, it is yet followed by the phrase in the singular, and God made man. This is said in the plural, after our likeness, followed by the phrase in the singular, after the image of God.^[1] Thus humankind is renewed in the knowledge of God, after the image of him who created them.^[2] Being made spiritual, he judges all things—all things that are to be judged—yet he himself is judged by no mortal.^[3]

The teachers of the Word come and go, and others follow in the succession of those who pass away. But the sacred Scripture remains for all time without ever being abolished, until the time when the Lord shall appear at the end of the world. Then we shall have no further need for the Scriptures or for those who interpret them, since there will be a long-awaited fulfillment of that promise of the Lord that says, And they shall not teach their neighbor and brother saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.

God raised Christ to the skies, transplanting mortality into immortality and translating earth to heaven—he, the husbandman of God, pointing out the favorable signs and rousing the nations to good works, putting them in mind of their true sustenance,^[1] having bestowed on us the truly great, divine and inalienable inheritance of the Father, deifying people by heavenly teaching, putting his laws into our minds and writing them on our hearts. What laws does he inscribe? That all shall know God, from small to great, and, I will be merciful to them, says God, and will not remember their sins. Let us receive the laws of life, let us comply with God’s corrections. Let us become acquainted with him, that he may be gracious.

To show the rapidity of the change and the facility with which they would embrace Christ’s teaching, the prophet went on to say, And they shall no more teach everyone his neighbor and everyone his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all will know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. On his coming, Christ would also pardon the transgressions of all people and no more remember their sins. What could be clearer than this? By these predictions the prophet revealed the calling of the Gentiles, the superiority of the new law over the old law, the ease of access, the grace possessed by those who have believed and the gift given in baptism.

In Jeremiah, we read concerning the future kingdom . . . , They shall all know me, from the least to the greatest of them. The context of this passage clearly shows that the prophet is describing the future kingdom. But how can there possibly be in it a least or greatest, if all are to be equal? The secret is disclosed in the Gospel: Whoever shall do and teach, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever shall teach and not do shall be least.^[1]

The adulterous woman whom the law prescribed to be stoned was set free by him with truth and grace when the avengers of the law, frightened with the state of their own conscience, had left the trembling guilty woman to the judgment of him who had come to seek and save what was lost.^[1] For that reason he, bowing down—that is, stooping down to our human level and intent on the work of our reformation—wrote with his finger on the ground,^[2] in order to repeal the law of the commandments with the decrees of his grace and to reveal himself as the One who had said, I will give my laws in their understanding, and I will write them in their hearts. This indeed he does every day when he infuses his will into the hearts of those who are called and when with the pen of the Holy Spirit the Truth mercifully rewrites on the pages of their souls all that the devil enviously falsified.

Obviously, those who have heard the gospel and refused to believe are all the more inexcusable than if they had not listened to any preaching of the truth. But it is certain that in God’s foreknowledge they were not children of Abraham and were not reckoned among the number of them of whom it is said, In your seed all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed.^[1] He promised them the faith when he said, And no one shall teach his neighbor and no one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord.’ For all shall know me, from the small among them even to the great. He promised them pardon when he said, I will forgive their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. He promised them an obedient heart when he said, I will give them another heart and another way, that they may fear me all days.^[2] He promised them perseverance when he said, I will give my fear in their heart, that they may not revolt from me, and I will visit them, that I may make them good.^[3] Finally, to all without exception he promised the faith when he said, I have sworn by myself, justice alone shall go out of my mouth, and my words shall not be turned away. Every knee shall be bowed to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.^[4]