Chapter 126

¹ But that we may not in this matter either leave the subject before us without demonstration—because man is greedy for knowledge—being compelled, we speak under constraint what it is not permitted to speak.

² For the times, reckoned from the foundation of the world and from Adam, set plainly before us the things sought.

³ For the first coming of our Lord, the one in the flesh, in which he was born in Bethlehem, took place on the fourth day before the nones of April, on the eighth day before the kalends of January, on a Wednesday, in the forty-second year of the reign of Augustus, and in the five thousand five hundredth year from Adam; and he suffered in his thirty-third year, on the eighth day before the kalends of April, on a Friday, in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, when Rufus and Rubellio were consuls, and Gaius Caesar for the fourth time, and Gaius Cestius Saturninus.

⁴ It is therefore of necessity that the six thousand years be fulfilled, so that the Sabbath may come, the rest, the holy day, on which God rested from all his works which he had begun to make.

⁵ The Sabbath is a type and image of the coming kingdom of the saints, when they shall reign together with Christ, when he comes from the heavens, as John also relates in his Apocalypse; for a day of the Lord is as a thousand years.

⁶ Since, then, in six days God made all things, the six thousand years must be fulfilled; for they have not yet been fulfilled, as John says: “The five have fallen, and the one is”—that is, the sixth—“the other has not yet come”; and by “the other” he means and describes the seventh, in which there will be the rest.