With these and many further
attestations of the law and the prophets proving that the Church is spread throughout
the whole world, the divine psalms also concur as follows: The Lord said to
me: You are my son, today I bore you; ask it of me and I shall give to you the
nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession [Ps
2.7-8]. Again in another psalm about Christ the Lord invoking Solomon
figuratively: He will be Lord from sea to sea, and from the water all the
way up to the borders of the ends of the earth. The Ethiopians will fall before
him, and his enemies will eat the dust. The kings of Tharsis and their islands
will offer presents, the kings of Arabia and Saba [Sheba and Seba] will
bring gifts. And all the kings of the earth will adore him. All nations will
serve him [Ps 71/72.8-11]. Again, in another psalm: God, the Lord of the
gods, has spoken and called it earth from the rising of the sun all the way to
its setting; out F Zion the appearance of her beauty [Ps 49/50.1-2].
It is for that reason the Lord
Jesus himself also, who had spoken before through the mouths of the prophets,
after he had risen from the dead, now promised the Church through his own mouth
in these terms: It was necessary, he said, that all things which were written
in the law, both the prophets and the psalms, be fulfilled through me. At that
moment he awakened their perception, so they might understand the Scriptures,
and he said to them: that it was written thus and therefore it was necessary
for Christ to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and penance and
remission of sins for all the nations was to be preached in his name, with them
beginning from Jerusalem, [Lk 24.44-47], just as if he was putting into different
words that testimony of the psalm which we presented directly above. For what
was put there: and he called it earth from the rising all the way to the
setting of the sun [Ps 49/50.1] the Lord said here: through all the nations
[Lk 24.27]. For who does not know that Zion and Jerusalem are one and the
same city, where the passion and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ began to
be preached by a most dazzling proclamation across the world for cleansing and
saving peoples? (“Transcript of the 411 Conference: Day 1” (June 1, 411), in The
Conference of Carthage in 411 [trans. Erika Hermanowicz and Neil McLynn;
Translated Texts for Historians 90; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,
2025], 89-90)
