Biblia Sacra (Gutenberg Bible)

on the right, so that after the red, dappled, black, and white horses, and the dissipated chariots, and Effraim Ephraim, and the king of Iherusalem Jerusalem poor and riding on an ass, he might prophesy the predicted king sitting upon the foal of a beast of burden. Malachias Malachi, aptly and at the end of all the prophets, writes of the rejection of Israel and the calling of the nations.

"I have no pleasure in you," says the Lord of hosts, "and I will not receive a gift from your hand. For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the nations, and in every place a clean oblation is sacrificed and offered to my name."

Isaiam Isaiah, Iheremiam Jeremiah, Ezechiel Ezekiel, and Daniel—who can understand or explain them? The first of whom seems to me to weave not a prophecy but a gospel. The second shows a rod, a nut tree, and a burning pot from the face of the north, and a leopard stripped of its colors, and he weaves an alphabet divided into quadruple meters. The third has its beginning and end wrapped in such obscurities that among the Hebrews they are not read with the beginning of Genesis until they are thirty years old. The fourth, however, who is among the four prophets, conscious of the times and a lover of history of the whole world, announces with clear speech the stone cut from the mountain without hands and the subversion of all kingdoms. David, our Simonides, Pindar, and Alcaeus, Flaccus, and Catullus, and Serenus, preaches Christ with the lyre and rouses the resurrected from the dead on the ten-stringed psaltery. Salomon Solomon, peaceful and beloved of the Lord, corrects morals, teaches nature, joins the church and Christ, and sings the sweet epithalamium of the sacred nuptials. Hester Esther, in the type of the church, frees the people from danger, and after Aman Haman—which is interpreted as "iniquity"—is killed, he sends the parts of the feast and the day to be celebrated by future generations.

The book of Paralipomenon Chronicles is such an epitome of the Old Testament that if anyone wishes to arrogate to himself knowledge of the scriptures without it, he mocks himself. For through the individual names and the connections of words, histories omitted in the books of Kings are touched upon, and innumerable questions of the gospel are explained. Heldras Ezra and Neemias Nehemiah, that is, the helper and the consoler from the Lord, are tightened into one volume; the temple is restored, the walls of the city are built, and that whole crowd of the people returning to the fatherland, and the description of the priests, Levites, Israelites, proselytes, and the work of the walls and towers divided by individual families—all these things present one thing in the surface, and hold another in the marrow. You see me, rapt by the love of the scriptures, exceeding the measure of a letter, and yet not fulfilling what I desired. We have heard only what we ought to desire to know, so that we too can say what we can:

"My soul has coveted to desire your justifications at all times."

Furthermore, that Socratic saying is fulfilled in us:

"This only I know, that I know nothing."

I will also touch upon the New Testament briefly. Matheus Matthew, Marcus Mark, Lucas Luke, and Iohannes John, the chariot of the Lord and the true Cherubin Cherubim, which is interpreted as the fullness of knowledge, are full of eyes throughout the whole body; flashes of lightning shine forth, they run about, they have straight feet and reaching toward the sublime; they hold feathered backs and fly everywhere, they hold each other, and they are intertwined, and as if a wheel in a wheel they turn, and they go wherever the breath of the Holy Spirit has led them. Paulus Paul the apostle writes to seven churches, for the eighth to the Hebrews is placed by many outside the number. He instructs Thimotheum Timothy and Titus and Philomonem Philemon, and prays for the fugitive slave, about whom I think it is better to be silent than to write little. The Actus Apostolorum Acts of the Apostles seem indeed to be naked