Augustine, that the Jews were never further from idolatry nor
more religious observers of their law than they were then, and that,
excepting the crime of the death of Jesus Christ, God, very far from
punishing them, would, it seems, rather have loaded them with His
blessings. You know all this, I say; and all this is a convincing
proof that the blood of this God-man is virtually fallen upon these
sacrilegious men, and that God, in condemning them by their own mouth,
altho in spite of Himself, employs that to destroy them which was
designed for their salvation.
But, Christians, to speak with the Holy Spirit, this has happened to
the Jews only as a figure; it is only the shadow of the fearful curses
of which the abuse of the merits and passion of the Son of God must be
to us the source and the measure. I will explain myself. What do we,
my dear hearers, when borne away by the immoderate desires of our
hearts to a sin against which our consciences protest? And what do
we, when, possest of the spirit of the world, we resist a grace which
solicits us, which presses us to obey God? Without thinking upon it,
and without wishing it, we secretly pronounce the same sentence of
death which the Jews pronounced against themselves before Pilate, when
they said to him, "His blood be upon us.
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