Jeremias 7:4

[1.] The Jews greatly prided themselves on the temple and the tabernacle. Wherefore they said, “The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord.” ( Jer. vii. 4 .) For nowhere else in the earth was such a temple constructed as this, either for costliness, or beauty, or anything else. For God who ordained it, commanded that it should be made with great magnificence, because they also were more attracted and urged on by material things. For it had bricks of gold in the walls; and any one who wishes may learn this in the second [book] of Kings, and in Ezekiel, and how many talents of gold were then expended.

3. In speaking thus I am not laying myself open to a charge of inconsistency or condemning the course which I have myself taken. It is not, I believe, for nothing that I, like Abraham, have left my home and people. But I do not presume to limit God’s omnipotence or to restrict to a narrow strip of earth Him whom the heaven cannot contain. Each believer is judged not by his residence in this place or in that but according to the deserts of his faith. …

37. About four hundred years have passed since the preaching of Christ flashed upon the world, and during that time in which His robe has been torn by countless heresies, almost the whole body of error has been derived from the Chaldæan, Syriac, and Greek languages. Basilides, the master of licentiousness and the grossest sensuality, after the lapse of so many years, and like a second Euphorbus, was changed by transmigration into Jovinian, so that the Latin tongue might have a heresy of its own. Was there no other province in the whole world to receive the gospel of pleasure, and into which the serpent might insinuate itself, except that which was founded by the teaching of Peter, upon the rock Christ? Idol temples had fallen before the standard of the Cross and the severity of the Gospel: now on the contrary lust and gluttony endeavour to overthrow the solid structure of the Cross. …

3. And now hear concerning faith that is based upon the Stone, and concerning the structure that is reared up upon the Stone. For first a man believes, and when he believes, he loves. When he loves, he hopes. When he hopes, he is justified. When he is justified, he is perfected. When he is perfected, he is consummated. And when his whole structure is raised up, consummated, and perfected, then he becomes a house and a temple for a dwelling-place of Christ, as Jeremiah the Prophet said: The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are ye, if ye amend your ways and your works . And again He said through the Prophet: I will dwell in them and walk in them . And also the Blessed Apostle thus said: Ye are the temple of God and the spirit of Christ dwelleth in you . And also our Lord again thus said to His disciples: Ye are in Me and I am in you .

6. For by the mouth of His prophet God called the heathen King Nebuchadnezzar, King of Kings. For Jeremiah said: Every people and kingdom that shall not put his neck into the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Kings, My servant, with famine and with sword and with pestilence will I visit that people . Though He is the great King, He grudges not the name of Kingship to men. And (so), though He is the great God, yet He grudged not the name of Godhead to the sons of flesh. And though all fatherhood is His, He has called men also fathers. For He said to the congregation: Instead of thy fathers, shall be thy children . And though authority is His, He has given men authority one over another. And while worship is His unto honour, He has yet allowed it in the world, that one man should honour another. …