St Basil the Great ON THE HOLY SPIRIT, Complete

Translated by Bl. Jackson.

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88 Pages

Page 36

32. What then? Because they were typically baptized unto Moses, is the grace of baptism therefore small? Were it so, and if we were in each case to prejudice the dignity of our privileges by comparing them with their types, not even one of these privileges could be reckoned great; then not the love of God, who gave His only begotten Son for our sins, would be great and extraordinary, because Abraham did not spare his own son; [984] then even the passion of the Lord would not be glorious, because a sheep typified the offering instead of Isaac; then the descent into hell was not fearful, because Jonah had previously typified the death in three days and three nights. The same prejudicial comparison is made also in the case of baptism by all who judge of the reality by the shadow, and, comparing the typified with the type, attempt by means of Moses and the sea to disparage at once the whole dispensation of the Gospel. What remission of sins, what renewal of life, is there in the sea? What spiritual gift is there through Moses? What dying [985] of sins is there? Those men did not die with Christ; wherefore they were not raised with Him. [986] They did not "bear the image of the heavenly;" [987] they did "bear about in the body the dying of Jesus;" [988] they did not "put off the old man;" they did not "put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him which created him." [989] Why then do you compare baptisms which have only the name in common, while the distinction between the things themselves is as great as might be that of dream and reality, that of shadow and figures with substantial existence?

[984] cf. Rom. viii. 32.

[985] nekrosis. A.V. in 2 Cor. iv. 10, "dying," Rom. iv. 19, "deadness."

[986] cf. Rom. vi. 8.

[987] 1 Cor. xv. 49.

[988] 2 Cor. iv. 10.

[989] Col. iii. 9, 10.

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