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.First of all, after He had made the water wine atCana of Galilee, He went up to the festival day of the passover, on whichoccasion it is written, For many believed in Him, when they saw thesigns which He did, as John the disciple of the Lord records.Then, again,withdrawing Himself [from Judaea], He is found in Samaria; on whichoccasion, too, He conversed with the Samaritan woman, and while at adistance, cured the son of the centurion by a word, saying, Go thy way,thy son liveth. Afterwards He went up, the second time, to observe thefestival day of the passover in Jerusalem; on which occasion He cured theparalytic man, who had lain beside the pool thirty-eight years, bidding himrise, take up his couch, and depart.Again, withdrawing from thence to theother side of the sea of Tiberias, He there seeing a great crowd hadfollowed Him, fed all that multitude with five loaves of bread, and twelvebaskets of fragments remained over and above.Then, when He had raisedLazarus from the dead, and plots were formed against Him by thePharisees, He withdrew to a city called Ephraim; and from that place, as itis written He came to Bethany six days before the passover, and goingup from Bethany to Jerusalem, He there ate the passover, and suffered onthe day following.Now, that these three occasions of the passover are notincluded within one year, every person whatever must acknowledge.Andthat the special month in which the passover was celebrated, and in whichalso the Lord suffered, was not the twelfth, but the first, those men whoboast that they know all things, if they know not this, may learn it fromMoses.Their explanation, therefore, both of the year and of the twelfthmonth has been proved false, and they ought to reject either theirexplanation or the Gospel; otherwise [this unanswerable question forcesitself upon them], How is it possible that the Lord preached for one yearonly?4.Being thirty years old when He came to be baptized, and thenpossessing the full age of a Master, He came to Jerusalem, so that Hemight be properly acknowledged by all as a Master.For He did not seemone thing while He was another, as those affirm who describe Him as beingman only in appearance; but what He was, that He also appeared to be.Being a Master, therefore, He also possessed the age of a Master, not 781despising or evading any condition of humanity, nor setting aside inHimself that law which He had appointed for the human race, butsanctifying every age, by that period corresponding to it which belonged toHimself.For He came to save all through means of Himself all, I say,who through Him are born again to God infants, and children, and boys,and youths, and old men.He therefore passed through every age, becomingan infant for infants, thus sanctifying infants; a child for children, thussanctifying those who are of this age, being at the same time made to theman example of piety, righteousness, and submission; a youth for youths,becoming an example to youths, and thus sanctifying them for the Lord.Solikewise He was an old man for old men, that He might be a perfect Masterfor all, not merely as respects the setting forth of the truth, but also asregards age, sanctifying at the same time the aged also, and becoming anexample to them likewise.Then, at last, He came on to death itself, that Hemight be the first-born from the dead, that in all things He might have thepre-eminence, the Prince of life, existing before all, and going before all.5.They, however, that they may establish their false opinion regardingthat which is written, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, maintain that He preached for one year only, and then suffered in thetwelfth month.[In speaking thus], they are forgetful to their owndisadvantage, destroying His whole work, and robbing Him of that agewhich is both more necessary and more honorable than any other; thatmore advanced age, I mean, during which also as a teacher He excelled allothers.For how could He have had disciples, if He did not teach? Andhow could He have taught, unless He had reached the age of a Master? Forwhen He came to be baptized, He had not yet completed His thirtiethyear, but was beginning to be about thirty years of age (for thus Luke, whohas mentioned His years, has expressed it: Now Jesus was, as it were,beginning to be thirty years old, when He came to receive baptism); and,[according to these men,] He preached only one year reckoning from Hisbaptism.On completing His thirtieth year He suffered, being in fact still ayoung man, and who had by no means attained to advanced age.Now, thatthe first stage of early life embraces thirty years, and that this extendsonwards to the fortieth year, every one will admit; but from the fortiethand fiftieth year a man begins to decline towards old age, which our Lordpossessed while He still fulfilled the office of a Teacher, even as the 782Gospel and all the elders testify; those who were conversant in Asia withJohn, the disciple of the Lord, [affirming] that John conveyed to them thatinformation.And he remained among them up to the times of Trajan.Someof them, moreover, saw not only John, but the other apostles also, andheard the very same account from them, and bear testimony as to the[validity of] the statement.Whom then should we rather believe? Whethersuch men as these, or Ptolemaeus, who never saw the apostles, and whonever even in his dreams attained to the slightest trace of an apostle?6.But, besides this, those very Jews who then disputed with the LordJesus Christ have most clearly indicated the same thing.For when the Lordsaid to them, Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day; and he saw it,and was glad, they answered Him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, andhast Thou seen Abraham? Now, such language is fittingly applied to onewho has already passed the age of forty, without having as yet reached hisfiftieth year, yet is not far from this latter period.But to one who is onlythirty years old it would unquestionably be said, Thou art not yet fortyyears old. For those who wished to convict Him of falsehood wouldcertainly not extend the number of His years far beyond the age whichthey saw He had attained; but they mentioned a period near His real age,whether they had truly ascertained this out of the entry in the publicregister, or simply made a conjecture from what they observed that Hewas above forty years old, and that He certainly was not one of onlythirty years of age.For it is altogether unreasonable to suppose that theywere mistaken by twenty years, when they wished to prove Him youngerthan the times of Abraham.For what they saw, that they also expressed;and He whom they beheld was not a mere phantasm, but an actual being offlesh and blood
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