Painters, bronze, and Moses' veil

Cyril went on: And when the many kinds of colors have been thrown upon the shadows, and the bronze also has melted the things of wax, the first shapes, the ones at the beginning, might seem for a little to have been set aside and overthrown. But the thing is not so by nature. For bronze-worker and painter, if they told the truth, would say: We have not destroyed the shadows; we have not sent the types into utter uselessness; we have rather fulfilled them. For what could still be seen more dimly and less beautifully, as in shadows and types, this has gone forward toward what is better and more manifest.

Palladius said: You speak well.

Cyril: And if anyone should choose to search the holy and God-breathed Scripture truly, he will know that what I say is wholly true. For Moses used to put a veil on his own face, because the sons of Israel could not gaze into his face, according to what is written.

Palladius: And what does this hint?

Cyril: For minds of the Jews that were still rather dull, the outward things of the Law were somehow bearable — I mean again the things through the letter alone — but the things hidden inside were wholly unbearable and not to be approached, and, so to speak, the true face of the meanings. That is why divine Paul also writes to us: 'For until this day the same veil remains on the reading of the Old Covenant, not being unveiled, because it is abolished in Christ. But to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart.' But let the things of the Jews stand here. 'And we all,' he says, 'with unveiled face, mirroring the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord, the Spirit; and the Lord is the Spirit.' For just as those who look in a mirror would gaze at an image and type of the true, and not at the true itself, in the same way, I think, those who desire to see the beauty of the life in Christ would succeed at the thing longed for in the best way by using the Law as a mirror. For remaking the same image of the things into truth, they will know purely what seems most of all good and well-pleasing to God.

Palladius: Then what would be the reason that the new gospel word was not given to the people of old at the start, and types and shadows were legislated instead?

Cyril: The exact account of God's plan, and how these things would stand, in what is truer, must be referred piously to God who knows all. But reasonings that do not know how to go without good thoughts do carry us somehow, at least to a moderate knowledge, or perhaps even to seeming to know the occasion of the plan. We say, then, that those redeemed from Egypt needed much tutoring, and a kind of upbringing suited to infants. For they were still dull of mind, and very easily carried toward anything most shameful.