Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Let the heretic now learn, in full measure, along with the Jew himself if he wishes, the very reasoning behind that error — since, borrowing his guidance in this argument, he has fallen, blind led by blind, into the very same pit. We say that two conditions of Christ were shown by the prophets, foretelling as many comings of him: one in lowliness — the first, of course — when he was to be led like a sheep to slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer without a voice, so opening not his mouth, not even comely to look at. [2] 'We brought word of him,' it says, 'like an infant, like a shoot planted in parched soil, having neither shape nor splendor; and when our eyes fell on him, he possessed no shape and no comeliness, but his appearance was stripped of honor, lesser than the sons of men, a man familiar with grief and no stranger to the bearing of sickness' — set by the Father as a stumbling-stone and an offense-rock, brought a little below the angels, styling himself a worm rather than a man, the scorn of men and the object of the people's contempt. [3] These marks of lowliness fit the first coming, just as marks of loftiness fit the second, when he will no longer be the stone of stumbling or the rock of offense, but the very topmost cornerstone, taken up after rejection and exalted to complete the temple — that is, the church — and indeed that very rock in Daniel cut from the mountain, which will crush and grind to powder the image of the kingdoms of this world. [4] Of this coming the same prophet says: 'And behold, one coming with the clouds of heaven like a son of man; he came all the way to the Ancient of Days, he stood in his presence, and those who attended brought him near, and dominion was granted to him, together with every people of every land arrayed by their tribes, and all splendor rendered in his service, and his dominion endures without end, incapable of being stripped away, and his reign incapable of ruin' — [5] then indeed he shall have an honorable form and undying beauty beyond the sons of men. 'Ripe with beauty,' it says, 'beyond the sons of men, grace is poured upon your lips, therefore God has blessed you forever. Gird your sword upon your thigh, mighty in your ripeness and your beauty' — for the Father too, having set him briefly beneath the rank of angels, will encircle him with honor and splendor and place all things beneath his feet. [6] Then also those who pierced him shall know him, and tribe by tribe shall beat their breasts, precisely because earlier they failed to know him amid the humbleness of his human state: 'And he is a man,' says Jeremiah, 'and who shall know him?' And again, 'His generation,' says Isaiah, 'who shall declare it?' So too in Zechariah, in the person of Jesus — indeed in the very mystery of the name itself — the true high priest of the Father, Christ Jesus, is sketched in a double dress for the two comings: first clothed in filthy garments, that is, in the indignity of suffering, mortal flesh, when the devil too opposed him — the instigator, of course, of Judas the traitor, not to mention the tempter even after his baptism — then stripped of his old filth and adorned with the robe and the miter and the clean turban, that is, with the glory and honor of the second coming. [7] For if I were also to interpret the two goats offered on the Fast, do not they too picture the two orders of Christ? Alike and matching, because it is the same Lord who will be seen, since he is not to come in another form, so that he may be recognized by those who wounded him. One of them, wrapped in scarlet, cursed and spat upon and torn and pierced, was driven out of the city by the people to destruction, marked with the plain tokens of the Lord's passion. The other, offered for sins and given as food to the priests of the temple, signified the marks of his second appearing, in which, once every sin has been atoned away, those who serve the spiritual sanctuary — namely the church — partake of the Lord's grace, as it were, in a meal of flesh, while everyone else goes hungry for salvation. [8] Since, then, the first coming was sung of largely veiled in figures and cast down in every dishonor, but the second was foretold both plain and worthy of God, it is no wonder that, easily grasping and believing what they could — namely the second, fixing their gaze on that alone — they were deceived about the more obscure, certainly the less exalted, that is the first. And so even now they refuse to admit that their Messiah has already arrived, since he did not arrive in splendor, not grasping that he was equally destined to arrive in humbleness.
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