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¹ Since there is, among many, a zeal over the offering of the unleavened bread hotter than fire, as the saying goes—so that they would sooner give up their lives than let go of their opinion about it (for some cling to their own passion in just this way, which Paul reckons a judgment and a snare of the devil)—what needs to be said to such people we will say later, where we will chastise the excess of some people’s zeal and show others that what refuses to be humbled is a lowly thing.

² As for the Latins, we will not misconstrue the “first day of unleavened bread” by claiming it is the tenth of the month, on which the lamb was taken. We know that the Law calls the fifteenth day the first of unleavened bread, the day on whose eve the night for eating the Passover began to dawn. Hence one of our own divine teachers,[1] expounding the day the evangelist calls “the first of unleavened bread,” says that Matthew calls “first of unleavened bread” the day before the unleavened bread—knowing well on which day the Law places that name, but marking this as something the evangelist says in a new sense.

³ But neither will we suggest that the Lord did not keep the legal Passover at all—so as to show he did not partake of unleavened bread—nor that he kept it, but before the time when the leaven was to be removed, so that leavened bread was still to be found. Some have already ventured to say such things too boldly. I myself will adopt none of these views; it is not right to hurry to establish the mysteries of truth out of falsehood. And since Christ is the way and the truth, I will not willingly stray from the way, nor speak falsely of what is not, against the truth.

⁴ What, then, is my own view? That the Lord ate the Passover at the proper time, when the hour came, prepared for him by the disciples and the householder according to custom, and not otherwise (for if the Lord had done anything beyond the Law on this occasion, the Gospel would have noted the innovation, just as it noted the other things he did in going beyond the Law—not only he himself, but the disciples too: such as making clay on the Sabbath, telling a man to take up his mat, rubbing heads of grain, eating bread with unwashed hands)—but that he first ate the legal Passover, and then handed over to the disciples the mystery of his own Passover, made, evidently, from the bread that happened to be at hand, which at that time happened to be unleavened.

⁵ Yet it is not because that bread was unleavened, the Law making this a necessity, that we too, who now enjoy freedom in Christ, must from necessity desire the unleavened, rejecting the leavened. Or take it on just this ground—for it is no bad thing to engage in this fashion those who cling to the letter in another—since that bread was likely, more than likely, a cheap sort, and perhaps of barley (for neither the host nor the guests lived delicately, but were, in the general frugality of their life, also accustomed to barley loaves, from which even thousands were fed, so that you may learn that frugality itself can work wonders).

⁶ What, then, prevents us now too, if we insist on seeking such bread, from banishing the fine wheat-flour bread present at the altar? — as if we were now hearing the Lord say, if you offer me fine flour, it is in vain. The same could be said of the cup: that one was perhaps of watered wine, or even from the dregs, in keeping with God’s own humility elsewhere; but now a fragrant, choice wine is often offered. Shall we, then, send away this costly wine and prefer instead one that reeks of cheapness—if indeed we should require it to be Palestinian, and from that very region, and, if I am not stringing together nonsense, from the very jar that filled the Lord’s own cup? Truly there is great poverty of mind in all this.

⁷ Or will you, after eating, also partake of the mystery reclining, and even require an upper room,[2] and all the other things then required by the custom of the time, but now transformed into another pattern, piety and faith so prescribing for us?