Annotation LIV
”Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you.” — Matthew 11:28
On the Law of Moses.
The author of the Opus imperfectum, homily 28, calls the Law of Moses unjust, cruel, and proud, saying: “Do you see that the Law is unjust and burdensome? Therefore Christ exhorts men to come out from under the weight of the Jewish law, and to attain to the delightful grace, saying, ‘Come to me, all you.’ And below: Therefore the law was harsh; because whatever it commanded, it commanded in its wrath — not that it might save, but that it might punish. Likewise the law is proud: for it forbids every man to approach the holy things, except the high priest; it forbids a one-eyed man, or one weak in any member, to perform the priesthood. You see how the law is proud.”1 These words are not to be understood simply, as they are written, but are to be referred to the dignity of the evangelical law and grace — whose righteousness, gentleness, and humility are such that, in comparison with it, the Mosaic law, although just, mild, and humble, may seem to be unjust, proud, and harsh. In which sense also God, speaking in the prophet Ezekiel about the laws which he had given the Jews through Moses, says: “I gave them precepts [that were] not2 [precepts] not good, in which they cannot walk” — that is, precepts less good than the evangelical precepts themselves.