NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works - Holy Bible Institute

Objection that some were baptized unto Moses and believed in him, and an answer to it;with remarks upon types.“death reigned” 980 until the fulfilling of the law and the coming of Christ. And the firstbornwere preserved by God from being touched by the destroyer, to show that we who weremade alive in Christ no longer die in Adam. The sea and the cloud for the time being ledon through amazement to faith, but for the time to come they typically prefigured the graceto be. “Who is wise and he shall understand these things?” 981 —how the sea is typically abaptism bringing about the departure of Pharaoh, in like manner as this washing causes thedeparture of the tyranny of the devil. The sea slew the enemy in itself: and in baptism toodies our enmity towards God. From the sea the people came out unharmed: we too, as itwere, alive from the dead, step up from the water “saved” by the “grace” of Him who calledus. 982 And the cloud is a shadow of the gift of the Spirit, who cools the flame of our passionsby the “mortification” of our “members.” 98332. What then? Because they were typically baptized unto Moses, is the grace of baptismtherefore small? Were it so, and if we were in each case to prejudice the dignity of ourprivileges by comparing them with their types, not even one of these privileges could bereckoned great; then not the love of God, who gave His only begotten Son for our sins,would be great and extraordinary, because Abraham did not spare his own son; 984 theneven the passion of the Lord would not be glorious, because a sheep typified the offeringinstead of Isaac; then the descent into hell was not fearful, because Jonah had previouslytypified the death in three days and three nights. The same prejudicial comparison is madealso in the case of baptism by all who judge of the reality by the shadow, and, comparingthe typified with the type, attempt by means of Moses and the sea to disparage at once thewhole dispensation of the Gospel. What remission of sins, what renewal of life, is there inthe sea? What spiritual gift is there through Moses? What dying 985 of sins is there? Thosemen did not die with Christ; wherefore they were not raised with Him. 986 They did not“bear the image of the heavenly;” 987 they did “bear about in the body the dying of Jesus;” 988they did not “put off the old man;” they did not “put on the new man which is renewed inknowledge after the image of Him which created him.” 989 Why then do you compare980 Rom. v. 17.981 Hos. xiv. 9.982 Eph. ii. 5.983 Col. iii. 5.984 cf. Rom. viii. 32.985 νέκρωσις. A.V. in 2 Cor. iv. 10, “dying,” Rom. iv. 19, “deadness.”986 cf. Rom. vi. 8.987 1 Cor. xv. 49.988 2 Cor. iv. 10.989 Col. iii. 9, 10.183