Joshua 1:17

Let us see, then, what those who come from that land which Moses distributed say to Jesus: "as we obeyed Moses," they say, "so will we obey you also." Nothing is so true as that everyone who "obeys Moses obeys" also Jesus our Lord. "For of" Jesus "he wrote." Hence the Lord too in the Gospel, reproving them because, from the fact that they do not believe him, they do not believe Moses either, says: "if you believed Moses, you would surely believe me also; for of me he wrote." Yet to me this too does not seem idle, that these tribes which are dispensed through Moses are not three whole tribes, and those which obtain the inheritance through Jesus are not nine whole ones, but "two and a half" here and "nine and a half" there, and that one tribe is divided into two parts, whereby neither here is the third number filled up whole, nor there is the tenth perfectly and wholly completed. In which I judge this to be indicated: that even those former ones, who were governed under the law, did indeed touch upon the knowledge of the Trinity, yet not wholly and perfectly, but "in part." For there was lacking to them, within the Trinity, the knowledge also concerning the incarnation of the Only-begotten. For although they believed concerning his coming and concerning the rest of his dispensations not only believed but even preached, yet they could not also see and attain the things which they had believed; just as the Lord too says to his disciples concerning these: "many prophets and righteous men desired to see the things which you see, and did not see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and did not hear them." For their faith was not whole, inasmuch as the dispensation of the flesh had not yet been fulfilled in Christ; and what we now already believe to have been done and fulfilled, they believed only as yet to come. Therefore, then, those tribes are neither two, lest the fathers should be outside the faith and salvation of the Trinity, nor three whole and perfect, lest the mystery of the blessed Trinity should already seem to have been fulfilled in them. But they did indeed touch upon the third number and, as the Lord said, "desired to see the things which we see, and to hear the things which we hear," but they were by no means able, because the Son of Man had not yet been "lifted up," nor had "the fullness of the times" yet come. Here something more even…