Again, He is to be king then, no otherwise than as subordinate or vicegerent of God the Father, as Moses was in the wilderness; and as the high priests were before the reign of Saul; and as the kings were after it. For it is one of the prophecies concerning Christ, that He should be like, in office, to Moses: “I will raise them up a prophet,” saith the Lord ( Deut. 18:18), “from amongst their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words into his mouth”; and this similitude with Moses is also apparent in the actions of our Saviour himself, whilst He was conversant on earth. For as Moses chose twelve princes of the tribes to govern under him; so did our Saviour choose twelve apostles, who shall sit on twelve thrones, and judge the twelve tribes of Israel. And as Moses authorized seventy elders to receive the Spirit of God, and to prophesy to the people, that is, as I have said before, to speak unto them in the name of God; so our Saviour also ordained seventy disciples to preach His kingdom and salvation to all nations. And as when a complaint was made to Moses against those of the seventy that prophesied in the camp of Israel, he justified them in it, as being subservient therein to his government; so also our Saviour, when St. John complained to Him of a certain man that cast out devils in His name, justified him therein, saying (Luke 9:50), “Forbid him not, for he that is not against us, is on our part.”
Again, our Saviour resembled Moses in the institution of “sacraments,” both of “admission” into the kingdom of God, and of “commemoration” of his deliverance of His elect from their miserable condition. As the children of Israel had for sacrament of their reception into the kingdom of God, before the time of Moses, the rite of “circumcision,” which rite having been omitted in the wilderness, was again restored as soon as they came into the Land of Promise; so also the Jews, before the coming of our Saviour, had a rite of “baptizing,” that is, of washing with water all those that being Gentiles embraced the God of