§ 1.
In the same way also did that Elder, the Apostles’ disciple, reason about the two Testaments: declaring that surely they are both of one and the same God: and that there is no other God, besides Him Who made and formed us; nor any strength in their discourse, who say that this World of ours was made either by Angels, or by any kind of Power, or by some other God. For if a person once withdraw himself from the Creator of all things, and grant that the world with which we are concerned is made by some other, or through another, such an one must needs fall into much absurdity and many contradictions; for which he will render no reasons with either appearance or substance of truth. And therefore such as introduce other doctrines, hide from us the opinion which themselves have concerning God; knowing the unsoundness and futility of their own doctrine, and fearing to be overcome, and so have a chance of salvation1.
But if a man believe one God, Who also made all by His Word,2 even as Moses too saith, God said, Let there be Light, and there was Light; and we read in the Gospel,3 All things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made; and the Apostle Paul in like manner,4 One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father, Who is above all, and in us all:—this man in the first place will be holding the Head,5 whereby all the body being joined and knit together,6 doth also, through every joint which serveth to supply each part in its measure, make increase of the body to the edification of itself in love. In the next place again all his statements will be consistent, if he have likewise read the Scriptures diligently, with those who are Elders in the Church, with whom is the doctrine of the Apostles, as we have pointed out.
§ 2.
For as all the Apostles taught that there were two Testaments in the two peoples, so, that there is but one and the same God, Who ordered them both for the good of those men in whose time the Testaments were given, and who were beginning to believe God,—this we have made plain from the very doctrine of the Apostles in our third Book: as also that not without purpose, nor vainly, nor at random, was the former Testament given;7 but first, to bow down those to whom it was given in slavery to God, for their own good (for God needs not to be served by man): in the next place, to make manifest a figure of heavenly things, because man could not yet by his own sight behold the things which are of God: again, to prefigure the likenesses of what things are in the Church, that the Faith which belongs to ourselves may be made strong: lastly, to contain a prophecy of the future, that man might learn God’s universal foreknowledge.