Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/308

 the church collected and corrected when it already professed the dogma of the redemption. But in these books, in the Epistles of the apostles, we do not yet see the confirmation of the dogma, but there occur here and there obscure expressions, with which all the Epistles are filled, and which may rudely be interpreted in the sense of the dogma, as has been done by the consequent so-called fathers of the church, but not by those of the first centuries. It is enough to read the history of the church to be convinced that the first Christians did not have the slightest conception about this dogma. Thus, for example:

“The Apostle Peter commands the Christians: Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear: Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers: But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter i. 17-19).

Peter says that it is possible to mend only through faith in the teaching which was branded by the death of him who was as innocent as a lamb. And this is taken as a confirmation of the dogma of the redemption.

“Because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow his steps—who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed (1 Peter ii. 21, 24). For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1. Peter iii. 18).

The cruel death of Christ, who left us an example of life to follow him by, ought to make us heal ourselves. from sins and come to God. The expression is concise and metaphorical, just as the masses speak when they say that the martyrs have worked for us. And that is taken as a proof: “For I delivered unto you first of all