Corpus of Latin Ecclesiastical Writers, Vol. LV: The Letters of Augustine, Part II

and will have it into the eternal future, and that it has no author; and that with the priesthood transferred, a change of the law also occurs, so that the word of the Lord and the law of God go forth not from Agar the handmaid and Mount Sinai, but from Sarah the free woman and the fortress of Sion in Jerusalem. He exaggerates the difficulty of the matter in the prologue, saying: "Concerning whom we have much to say, and it is difficult to interpret." If the vessel of election referring to Paul the Apostle stands in awe of the mystery and confesses that the subject he is disputing is ineffable, how much more must we, like worms and fleas, confess that the only science we possess is the knowledge of our own ignorance, and attempt to show a vast house through a small hole? We say that the Apostle compared two priesthoods between themselves, that of the former people and that of the latter, and that the entire argument is directed at the fact that Melchisedech was a priest from the nations before Levi and Aaron, whose merit is so great that Abraham, in whose loins were the future priests of the Jews, received a blessing from him; and that everything which follows in the praises of Melchisedech is referred to the type of Christ, whose progress is the sacraments of the church.

5. I have read these things in the volumes of the Greeks, and I have wished to demonstrate them as if they were the vast expanse of the earth on a small tablet, not extending