Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/124

 This latter assertion,—that Abraham saw Jesus’ day,—refers without doubt to the occasion when Melchizedek, the Priest of ,—(which Most High God is expressly opposed, throughout the whole first chapter of the first book of Moses, to the subordinate and creating God Jehovah)—when, I say, this Priest of the Most High God blessed Abraham, the servant of Jehovah, and took tithes from him; from which latter circumstance the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews very fully and acutely proves the greater antiquity and superior rank of Christianity over Judaism, and expressly calls Jesus a Priest after the order of Melchizedek, and thus represents him as the restorer of the Religion of Melchizedek;—without doubt entirely in the sense of that peculiar revelation of Jesus which is given by John. In this Evangelist it remains wholly doubtful whether or not Jesus was of Jewish origin at all;—or if he were, what was his descent and parentage. Quite otherwise is it with Paul, by whom, even from the commencement of a Christian Church, John has been superseded. Paul, having become a Christian, would not admit that he had been in the wrong in having been once a Jew; both systems must therefore be united, and fitly accommodate themselves to each other. This is brought about in the following way, as indeed it could not easily have been effected in any other:—He sets out from the powerful, angry, and jealous God of Judaism; the same whom we have already depicted as the God of the whole Ancient World. With this God, according to Paul, the Jews had made a Covenant;—this was their advantage over the Heathen. During the existence of this Covenant they had but to keep the Law, and they were justified before God; that is, they had no farther evil to fear from him. By the murder of Jesus, however, they had broken this Covenant; and since that time it no longer availed them to keep the Law. On the contrary, since the death of Jesus,