Amos 6:4

With reason, therefore, the apostle enjoins, “Be not drunk with wine, in which there is much excess;” by the term excess ( ἀσωτία ) intimating the inconsistence of drunkenness with salvation ( τὸ ἄσωστον ). For if He made water wine at the marriage, He did not give permission to get drunk. He gave life to the watery element of the meaning of the law, filling with His blood the doer of it who is of Adam, that is, the whole world; supplying piety with drink from the vine of truth, the mixture of the old law and of the new word, in order to the fulfilment of the predestined time. …

“In the like manner,” says He, “did their fathers unto the prophets.” What a turncoat is Marcion’s Christ! Now the destroyer, now the advocate of the prophets! He destroyed them as their rival, by converting their disciples; he took up their cause as their friend, by stigmatizing their persecutors. But, in as far as the defence of the prophets could not be consistent in the Christ of Marcion, who came to destroy them; in so far is it becoming to the Creator’s Christ that He should stigmatize those who persecuted the prophets, for He in all things accomplished their predictions. Again, it is more characteristic of the Creator to upbraid sons with their fathers’ sins, than it is of that god who chastizes no man for even his own misdeeds. …

And so much indeed here; but There, when Christ is come, this one indeed shall stand with much boldness, and shall hear before the whole world, “Thou sawest Me an hungered, and didst feed Me; naked, and didst clothe Me; a stranger, and didst take Me in” ( Matt. xxv. 35 .); and all the like words: but the other shall hear the contrary; “Wicked and slothful servant” ( Matt. xxv. 26 .); and again, “Woe unto them that luxuriate upon their couches, and sleep upon beds of ivory, and drink the refined wine, and anoint themselves with the chief ointments; they counted upon these things as staying, and not as fleeting.” ( Amos vi. 4, 5, 6 , Sept.)

11. It would be tedious now to enumerate, what great additions and omissions the Septuagint has made, and all the passages which in church-copies are marked with daggers and asterisks. The Jews generally laugh when they hear our version of this passage of Isaiah, “Blessed is he that hath seed in Zion and servants in Jerusalem.” In Amos also after a description of self-indulgence there come these words: “They have thought of these things as halting and not likely to fly,” a very rhetorical sentence quite worthy of Tully. But how shall we deal with the Hebrew originals in which these passages and others like them are omitted, passages so numerous that to reproduce them all would require books without number? The number of the omissions is shown alike by the asterisks mentioned above and by my own version when compared by a careful reader with the old translation. …

19. What shall be said to this by those of us who are buyers and sellers of corn, and watch the hardships of the seasons, in order to grow prosperous, and luxuriate in the misfor tunes of others, and acquire, not, like Joseph, the property of the Egyptians, as a part of a wide policy, (for he could both collect and supply corn duly, as he also could foresee the famine, and provide against it afar off,) but the property of their fellow countrymen in an illegal manner, for they say, “When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell, and the sabbaths, that we may open our stores?” And they corrupt justice with divers measures and balances, and draw upon themselves the ephah of lead. …