24 August 2020
How the Wisdom of
God Healed Man
Moreover, as
the use of remedies is the way to health, so this remedy took up sinners to
heal and restore them. And just as surgeons, when they bind up wounds, do it
not in a slovenly way, but carefully, that there may be a certain degree of
neatness in the binding, in addition to its mere usefulness, so our medicine,
Wisdom, was by His assumption of humanity adapted to our wounds, curing some of
them by their opposites, some of them by their likes. And just as he who
ministers to a bodily hurt in some cases applies contraries, as cold to hot,
moist to dry, etc., and in other cases applies likes, as a round cloth to a
round wound, or an oblong cloth to an oblong wound, and does not fit the same
bandage to all limbs, but puts like to like; in the same way the Wisdom of God
in healing man has applied Himself to his cure, being Himself healer and
medicine both in one. Seeing, then, that man fell through pride, He restored
him through humility. We were ensnared by the wisdom of the serpent: we are set
free by the foolishness of God. Moreover, just as the former was called wisdom,
but was in reality the folly of those who despised God, so the latter is called
foolishness, but is true wisdom in those who overcome the devil. We used our
immortality so badly as to incur the penalty of death: Christ used His
mortality so well as to restore us to life. The disease was brought in through
a woman's corrupted soul: the remedy came through a woman's virgin body. To the
same class of opposite remedies it belongs, that our vices are cured by the
example of His virtues. On the other hand, the following are, as it were,
bandages made in the same shape as the limbs and wounds to which they are
applied: He was born of a woman to
deliver us who fell through a woman: He came as a man to save us who are men,
as a mortal to save us who are mortals, by death to save us who were dead. And
those who can follow out the matter more fully, who are not hurried on by the
necessity of carrying out a set undertaking, will find many other points of
instruction in considering the remedies, whether opposites or likes, employed
in the medicine of Christianity.
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