Chapter 8.—The Jews Liberated
from Their Bondage in One Way, the Gentiles in Another.
12. Accordingly the liberty that
comes by Christ took those whom it found under bondage to useful
signs, and who were (so to speak) near to it, and, interpreting the
signs to which they were in bondage, set them free by raising them
to the realities of which these were signs. And out of such were
formed the churches of the saints of Israel. Those, on the other
hand, whom it found in bondage to useless signs, it not only freed
from their slavery to such signs, but brought to nothing and
cleared out of the way all these signs themselves, so that the
Gentiles were turned from the corruption of a multitude of false
gods, which Scripture frequently and justly speaks of as
fornication, to the worship of the One God: not that they might
now fall into bondage to signs of a useful kind, but rather that
they might exercise their minds in the spiritual understanding of
such.