683. What is a name without the reality but an empty thing, or a sound like the echo given back by the trees of a forest or by vaulted buildings, or like the almost lifeless voice of dreamers, the noise of the wind, of the sea, or of some useless machinery? What but emptiness is the name even of a king, a duke, a consul, a bishop, an abbot, or a monk, without the office attached to the name? So what is the name Christian so long as the man lives like a barbarian, and contrary to the precepts of Christ, but like looking to the sign of Satan instead of the sign of Christ, although in baptism Christ's name is interwoven in golden threads? What but rebels and regicides are those who having received the sign of Christ, deride His worship, mock at His name, and acknowledge Him not as the Son of God but of Joseph? And what are their words but blasphemies against the Holy Spirit, which cannot be forgiven either in this world or in the next? These like dogs with open jaws bite at the Word, and tear it to pieces with their teeth. With such, as against Christ and the worship of Christ:
All tables are full of the vomit of filthiness (Isa. 28:8; Jer. 48:26).
And yet the Lord Jesus Christ is,
The Son of the Most High (Luke 1:32, 35);
The only begotten (John 1:18; 3:16);
The true God and eternal life (1 John 5:20);
In whom dwelleth all the fullness of Divinity bodily (Col. 2:9);
And is not the son of Joseph (Matt. 1:25). (And thousands of other passages.)