Page:Complete Works of Menno Simons.djvu/430

130 Moses says, "Ye stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel; your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger that is in thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water, that thou shouldest enter into covenant with the Lord thy God, and into his oath, which the Lord thy God maketh with thee this day," Deut. 5: 14; 16: 13, 14; Ex. 20: 10; 23: 12; Deut. 14: 29; 24: 19; Num. 15: 27; Lev. 4: 13; Num. 9: 14; Deut. 29: 10–12.

I think, brethren, that the cited passages sufficiently show and prove that they were called strangers, because they were not of the seed of Israel, and had no part in the distribution of the land; therefore, Moses commanded the Israelites to allow them the right to the tenths of the third year, to the gleanings of the field, of the olive trees and vineyards, and the first fruits of the land, as we have shown and explained from the writings of Moses.

In the second place, it might be asked, why we should shun the apostates, since Christ said, "Let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican," and since it is manifest that Christ, himself, did eat with the publicans. To this I reply: What kind of sinners they were, with whom Christ ate, is well explained by the evangelists. For, when the Pharisees murmured, Christ said, "They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick; but go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice; for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." What kind of sinners Matthew, the sinful woman, and Zaccheus were, after they had heard Christ is not a mystery, Matt. 9: 12, 13.

Again, Luke says, that all the publicans and sinners came to Christ to hear him, and with such did he eat, and therefore did he say to the murmuring Pharisees, "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine," &c., Luke 15: 4.

Again, that he ate with the Samaritans, is no wonder at all, for they received his word and believed on him; but that he should have sought hospitality in a Samaritan city, is not rightly translated, according to the Latin text. Thus it reads in Latin: Misit nunciosante conspectum suum, and euntes intraverunt in civitatum, Samaritanorum, ut pararent illi and non receperunt eum, quia facies ejus euntis Hierosolymam. Which being translated reads, He "sent messengers before his face, and they went and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him, and they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem," Luke 9: 52.

What kind of preparation is hereby meant, may, in my opinion, be clearly learned from the case of the seventy, related in Luke 10: 1; whom he sent before his face by two and two, to make preparation for him in all the cities and countries whither he himself would come, not to prepare a place for sojourning, but for the teaching of the kingdom of God. But here they did not receive him. He says not that the master of the house did not receive him, but they, that is, the inhabitants of the city, to whom he had sent them to preach, did not receive him; because, as Luke says, he was going to Jerusalem; for the Samaritans and the Jews always have had a severe strife between them in regard to worship and religious matters. Yea, so much so, that the Samaritans were considered by the Jews as being deserving of the ban, John 4: 9; and if it were true, that he desired to find a lodging-place, yet it is apparent that the Samaritans were not Gentiles, but a remnant of the ten tribes of Shalmaneser: for the Samaritan woman said unto Christ, "Art thou greater than our father Jacob?" That Jacob was not the father of the Gentiles, is manifest. She also looked for the Messiah, whom the Gentiles did not know, she said, "I know that the Messiah cometh, which is called Christ," John 4: 25. Again, after Stephen was stoned, Philip came into a Samaritan city and preached Christ unto them; and at that time they could not yet conscientiously preach the gospel unto the Gentiles and go amongst them. From this it may be safely educed that the Samaritans, who claimed the patriarch Jacob to be their father, who looked for the Messiah, and to whom they had already preached the gospel, before they were