Commodian — Carmen de Duobus Populis 281–320

…one may make a single fringe. Already flesh was God, in which God’s power was at work. What of this — that the prophets sing the invisible is to be seen, so that such brightness should also become man for us? Nor would our people have sprung forth in the new law if the Almighty had not ordered it beforehand concerning us. This was the Almighty, in whose name the nations were wholly to believe, as the prophet Isaiah said: A man will rise in Israel from Jesse’s root; the nations will hope in him, by whose sign they are kept. And another said he is a witness through the world — that he himself, a prince, be shown to the nations. In the psalms it is sung: The Lord has reigned from the wood; let the earth exult, let many islands be glad. So too patriarch Jacob: a true blessing appeared among the nations; this will be the hope of the nations, he says. Under heaven no other name is set forward except Christ’s, in whose name the nations everywhere have believed. We are not so urged to believe for a time of suffering, but for a future time, living in the eternal. This hope is to be hoped by us — to enjoy everlasting hope — not those joys our fragile state soon changes. Though riches be before the eyes richly to be enjoyed, you are shut out from them, a frail death put in their place; or if you last, you yourself shudder while living; or if health is bad, what is life to you? The whole in which we live under this age is torment; hence indeed hope in the future must be sought for us: this God urges, this the law, this Christ’s passion — that we believe we will rise in a new age. So God’s law cries: when the High One became humble, hell would yield, so that Adam be raised from death. The Lord went down into the tomb, pitying his own fashioned clay, and so through hidden things he emptied death’s strong things. The Lord crept on the old robber, hidden, and willed to suffer so that he might more throw him down. That one indeed bold and always savage as an enemy, while he hopes to rage against a man, was beaten by the Highest. Through what the malign one had first thrown man down to death — ****** Flesh was already God at work. Nations hope in Jesse’s root; the Lord reigns from the wood; he enters the tomb to empty death.