whereby God authenticated the law and the promise._
On this account it was that the law of God, given by the disposition
of angels, and which commanded that the one God of gods alone receive
sacred worship, to the exclusion of all others, was deposited in the
ark, called the ark of the testimony. By this name it is sufficiently
indicated, not that God, who was worshipped by all those rites, was
shut up and enclosed in that place, though His responses emanated from
it along with signs appreciable by the senses, but that His will was
declared from that throne. The law itself, too, was engraven on tables
of stone, and, as I have said, deposited in the ark, which the priests
carried with due reverence during the sojourn in the wilderness, along
with the tabernacle, which was in like manner called the tabernacle
of the testimony; and there was then an accompanying sign, which
appeared as a cloud by day and as a fire by night; when the cloud
moved, the camp was shifted, and where it stood the camp was pitched.
Besides these signs, and the voices which proceeded from the place
where the ark was, there were other miraculous testimonies to the law.
For when the ark was carried across Jordan, on the entrance to the
land of promise, the upper part of the river stopped in its course,
and the lower part flowed on, so as to present both to the ark and
the people dry ground to pass over. Then, when it was carried seven
times round the first hostile and polytheistic city they came to, its
walls suddenly fell down, though assaulted by no hand, struck by no
battering-ram. Afterwards, too, when they were now resident in the land
of promise, and the ark had, in punishment of their sin, been taken
by their enemies, its captors triumphantly placed it in the temple of
their favourite god, and left it shut up there, but, on opening the
temple next day, they found the image they used to pray to fallen to
the ground and shamefully shattered. Then, being themselves alarmed by
portents, and still more shamefully punished, they restored the ark
of the testimony to the people from whom they had taken it. And what
was the manner of its restoration? They placed it on a wagon, and
yoked to it cows from which they had taken the calves, and let them
choose their own course, expecting that in this way the divine will
would be indicated; and the cows, without any man driving or directing
them, steadily pursued the way to the Hebrews, without regarding the
lowing of their calves, and thus restored the ark to its worshippers.
To God these and such like wonders are small, but they are mighty to
terrify and give wholesome instruction to men. For if philosophers, and
especially the Platonists, are with justice esteemed wiser than other
men, as I have just been mentioning, because they taught that even
these earthly and insignificant things are ruled by Divine Providence,
inferring this from the numberless beauties which are observable not
only in the bodies of animals, but even in plants and grasses, how much
more plainly do these things attest the presence of divinity which
happen at the time predicted, and in which that religion is commended
which forbids the offering of sacrifice to any celestial, terrestrial,
or infernal being, and commands it to be offered to God only, who alone
blesses us by His love for us, and by our love to Him, and who, by
arranging the appointed times of those sacrifices, and by predicting
that they were to pass into a better sacrifice by a better Priest,
testified that He has no appetite for these sacrifices, but through
them indicated others of more substantial blessing,--and all this not
that He Himself may be glorified by these honours, but that we may be
stirred up to worship and cleave to Him, being inflamed by His love,
which is our advantage rather than His?