Finally, indeed, it is understood how much we Christians surpass both [Jews and Gentiles]. For [we are] both freed from the false and empty superstition of the Gentiles’ divination, and have now obtained the truest Urim and Thummim in the truest and gravest matters. The Jewish Priesthood was the type and figure of our Priesthood: the [good] things which were promised and given to them [were] temporary — [mere] shadow and image only of the heavenly and divine [things] which, through CHRIST JESUS, have been brought and communicated to us. About temporary and perishable goods — about the prosperous or adverse outcome of wars, about the manner of entering battle or flight, and about other like [matters] — the [Jewish] Priest, being interrogated, gave forth responses clear, certain, and wholly undoubted, so that they might much more truly be called τὰ δῆλα [ta dēla, “the manifest”] than that Apolline Delos. But we, indeed, about these lower and more abject conveniences of life, have received (so far as I know) no single oracle; but about those [things] which lead on to eternal happiness and perpetual, true goods — about those matters, I say, which pertain to faith, hope, and charity — there has been given to us [one] who may be consulted, and by whom clearly, certainly, and constantly answer may be given: the Pontifex Maximus, the Vicar of Christ the Lord Himself, the successor of St. Peter. But if it were not so, would not the Jews have been far happier than we? Would they not, in doubtful and most difficult times, have had more of aid and of divine colloquy? For neither did they lack even divine writings, which surpassed all the Gentiles’ auguries, tripods, [oracular] oaks, and lots.
I said [that] we have no single oracle about temporary goods, because it stands otherwise universally settled for us [that], if we cultivate religion and justice, keep the divine commands, do good, [and] decline from evil, those [goods] are supplied us most abundantly — or at least in that manner which [is] more conducive to us for the attaining of the better and the other goods. “[These] follow,” said St. Celestine (epistle 5, to the Emperor Theodosius), “all prosperous things, if first the [things] which are dearer to GOD be kept” — [as] namely, “justice exalteth a nation, but sin maketh peoples wretched” (Prov. 14[:34]); “Seek first the kingdom of GOD, and the rest shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6[:33]).