Matthew his warrant for
self-mutilation. But his great triumphs were in the allegorical
method. By its use the Bible was speedily made an oracle indeed,
or, rather, a book of riddles. A list of kings in the Old Testament
thus becomes an enumeration of sins; the waterpots of stone,
"containing two or three firkins apiece," at the marriage of Cana,
signify the literal, moral, and spiritual sense of Scripture; the
ass upon which the Saviour rode on his triumphal entry into
Jerusalem becomes the Old Testament, the foal the New Testament,
and the two apostles who went to loose them the moral and mystical
senses; blind Bartimeus throwing off his coat while hastening to
Jesus, opens a whole treasury of oracular meanings.
The genius and power of Origen made a great impression on the
strong thinkers who followed him. St. Jerome called him "the
greatest master in the Church since the apostles," and Athanasius
was hardly less emphatic.
The structure thus begun was continued by leading theologians
during the centuries following: St.
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