Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

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532 Hebrews X. 19-25.
sacrifices, and on these crutches would limp into heaven. In like
manner, we find still a half faith, when one belongs to the Church
and attends divine service, and on a death-bed desires the word of
Christ and the consolations of his grace, but yet only measures off
for Christ a certain 2^''^'ftion of his time and his activity, instead of
having Christ at all times before his eyes and in his heart, and letting
his whole being and life be penetrated by him, Christianity
and the business of the present life are regarded as two things
which, in respect of quantity, must be weighed against each other,
lest by giving too much to the one (Christianity) the other (the
earthly condition, honour, pleasure, etc.) should suflfer and be prejudiced
;
instead of its being remembered, that what we are and do
as men on the earth, we should be and do as Christians. But
wherever there is such incompleteness of faith, such shrinking from
a complete and entire devotedness to Christ, such earthly feeling
and reliance upon something else, as if happiness were to come from
this quarter or from that, only from some other source than from
Christ, there also, the danger is great of becoming the prey of error,
unbelief, ancTapostacy.
Thirdly, the fruit and effect of faith is required, viz. the consciousness
of sin heing 2)0,rdoned: 'Eppavnanh'ot rag Kapdlag drrb ovveidijaecog
-ovrjpdg. The expression, again, is figurative, and finds its explanation
partly, in chap. ix. 19 (in which is the figure of the pavr/^etv),
partly in chap. ix. 13, x. 2 (where we find the opposition between
the symbolical cleansing of the body and the real cleansing of the
avveidTjoig or Kapdia). 'Atto dej^ends on the idea of "cleansing" which
is implied in the (pregnant) pavri^eiv. I.vvei6r](7ig rrovrjpd is the opposite
of avveidTjoig dyaO/j, Acts xxiii. 1 ; 1 Pet. iii. 16 and 21 ;
1
Tim. i. 5 and 19. Taken exactly, however, it does not signify " evil
(rebuking) conscience," but " evil consciousness," where, indeed,
TovTjpd is to be resolved into a genitive of the object (" consciousness
of evil," consciousness of being evil).
The words kuI XtXovp.tvoi .... /caTf^w/ier, etc., form a second
member of the exhortation. Yidi XeXovfihoL cannot, of course, be any
longer dependent on Trpoaepxc^fi^Oa, as otherwise, an intolerable asyndeton
at KaTtx(^iLtv would be the result. This participle, then, rather
corresponds, in the place which it occupies, to the tx^'^''^'^) ^'cr.
1. (" Seeing that we have an entrance .... and a i)riest ....
let us enter with true heart, in full faith, cleansed from the evil conscience.
And if we are now washed .... let us hold fast," etc.)
If /.EAovfitvoi were grammatically connected with ippavnoptvoi (as
Olshausen and others 8Ui)j)0se), and connected, moreover, by a tovt'
tan, then might we bo justified in taking Xekovptfoi -u ovopa vdari
KaOapC) as the explanation of the figure ippavnoiitvoc, and in understanding
it in the proper sense of a icasliing of the body icitJi water