al goods which this people loved. And thus
they have had an extraordinary passion for their prophets, and, in sight
of the whole world, have had charge of these books which foretell their
Messiah, assuring all nations that He should come, and in the way
foretold in the books, which they held open to the whole world. Yet this
people, deceived by the poor and ignominious advent of the Messiah, have
been His most cruel enemies. So that they, the people least open to
suspicion in the world of favouring us, the most strict and most zealous
that can be named for their law and their prophets, have kept the books
incorrupt. Hence those who have rejected and crucified Jesus Christ, who
has been to them an offence, are those who have charge of the books
which testify of Him, and state that He will be an offence and rejected.
Therefore they have shown it was He by rejecting Him, and He has been
alike proved both by the righteous Jews who received Him, and by the
unrighteous who rejected Him, both facts having been foretold.

Wherefore the prophecies have a hidden and spiritual meaning, to which
this people were hostile, under the carnal meaning which they loved. If
the spiritual meaning had been revealed, they would not have loved it,
and, unable to bear it, they would not have been zealous of the
preservation of their books and their ceremonies; and if they had loved
these spiritual promises, and had preserved them incorrupt till the time
of the Messiah, their testimony would have had no force, because they
had been his friends.

Therefore it was well that the spiritual meaning should be concealed;
but, on the other hand, if this meaning had been so hidden as not to
appear at all, it could not have served as a proof of the Messiah. What
then was done? In a crowd of passages it has been hidden under the
temporal meaning, and in a few has been clearly revealed; besides that
the time and the state of the world have been so clearly foretold that
it is clearer than the sun. And in some places this spiritual meaning is
so clearly expressed, that it would require a blindness like that which
the flesh imposes on the spirit when it is subdued by it, not to
recognise it.

See, then, what has been the prudence of God. This meaning is concealed
under another in an infinite number of passages, and in some, though
rarely, it is revealed; but yet so that the passages in which it is
concealed are equivocal, and can suit both meanings; whereas