Christ Led Israel Out of Egypt

And when the apostle wanted to make this clear and plain to everyone, he spoke as follows, saying that “Jesus, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.” Elsewhere too we read: “Neither let us put Christ to the test, as some of them put him to the test, and were destroyed by serpents.” Peter too, the chief of the apostles, says: “And now why do you put God to the test by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, just as they were.” We know most certainly that the people of God were delivered from Egypt, led dry-shod through mighty stretches of water, and kept alive in the vast wastes of the desert by none but God alone; as it is written: “The Lord alone led them, and there was no foreign god among them.” How, then, can an apostle declare in so many and such clear passages that the Jewish people were delivered from Egypt by Jesus, and that Christ was at that time put to the test by the Jews in the wilderness, saying, “Neither let us put Christ to the test, as some of them put him to the test, and were destroyed by the serpents”? And further, the blessed apostle Peter says of all the saints who lived under the law of the old covenant that they were saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. [a]

Get out of this, then, and wriggle free if you can, whoever you are: you who rage with an empty mouth and a spirit of blasphemy, and think there is no difference at all between Adam and Christ; you who deny that he was God before his birth from the Virgin. Show clearly how you can prove that he was not God before his body came into existence. For look: an apostle says that the people were saved out of the land of Egypt by Jesus, that Christ was put to the test by unbelievers in the wilderness, and that our fathers, that is, the patriarchs and prophets, were saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Deny it if you can. I will not be surprised if you manage to deny what we all read, since you have already denied what we all believe.

Know, then, that even then it was Christ in God who led the people out of Egypt; it was Christ in God who was put to the test by the people who tested him; and it was Christ in God who saved all the righteous by his lavish grace. For through the oneness of the mystery of the incarnation, the terms God and Christ so pass into each other that whatever God did, we may say that Christ did; and whatever Christ afterward bore, we may say that God bore. And so, when the prophet said, “There will be no new god in you, nor will you worship any other god,” he announced it in the same sense and in the same spirit as the apostle when he said that Christ was the leader of the people of Israel out of Egypt. This was to show that he who was born of the Virgin as man was still in God, even through the unity of the mystery. Otherwise, unless we believe this, we must either believe with the heretics that Christ is not God, or, against the teaching of the prophet, hold that he is a new god. But far be it from the catholic people of God to seem either to differ from the prophet or to agree with heretics; or that the people who should be blessed should perhaps be caught up in a curse, and be charged with putting their hope in man. For whoever declares that the Lord Jesus Christ was a mere man at his birth falls doubly under the curse, whether he believes in him or not. For if he believes, “Cursed is he who puts his hope in man.” But if he does not believe, he is cursed nonetheless, because although he does not believe in a man, he has altogether denied God.