ded to look upon
the fruits of the first three years as unclean: for in that country
nearly all the trees bear fruit in three years' time; those trees, to
wit, that are cultivated either from seed, or from a graft, or from a
cutting: but it seldom happens that the fruit-stones or seeds encased
in a pod are sown: since it would take a longer time for these to
bear fruit: and the Law considered what happened most frequently. The
fruits, however, of the fourth year, as being the firstlings of clean
fruits, were offered to God: and from the fifth year onward they were
eaten.

The figurative reason was that this foreshadowed the fact that after
the three states of the Law (the first lasting from Abraham to David,
the second, until they were carried away to Babylon, the third until
the time of Christ), the Fruit of the Law, i.e. Christ, was to be
offered to God. Or again, that we must mistrust our first efforts, on
account of their imperfection.

Reply Obj. 6: It is said of a man in Ecclus. 19:27, that "the attire
of the body . . . " shows "what he is." Hence the Lord wished His
people to be distinguished from other nations, not only by the sign
of the circumcision, which was in the flesh, but also by a certain
difference of attire. Wherefore they were forbidden to wear garments
woven of woolen and linen together, and for a woman to be clothed
with man's apparel, or vice versa, for two reasons. First, to avoid
idolatrous worship. Because the Gentiles, in their religious rites,
used garments of this sort, made of various materials. Moreover in
the worship of Mars, women put on men's armor; while, conversely, in
the worship of Venus men donned women's attire. The second reason was
to preserve them from lust: because the employment of various
materials in the making of garments signified inordinate union of
sexes, while the use of male attire by a woman, or vice versa, has an
incentive to evil desires, and offers an occasion of lust. The
figurative reason is that the prohibition of wearing a garment woven
of woolen and linen signified that it was forbidden to unite the
simplicity of innocence, denoted by wool, with the duplicity of
malice, betokened by linen. It also signifies that woman is forbidden
to presume to teach, or perform other duties of men: or that man
should not adopt the effeminate manners of a woman.

Reply Obj. 7: As Jerome says on Matt. 23:6, "the Lord commanded them
to make violet-colored fringes in the fou