9. The _seven shepherds_ are the precepts of the law, whereby the flock not yet endued with reason are led through the wilderness by the rod of Moses, and governed. The _eight bites of man_ are the commandments of the Gospel, and the words of the Lord’s mouth. _For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation._ Those _bites_ are good whereby we have tasted the gift of eternal life, and in the Body of Christ have received the remission of sins. In the Old Testament the bite of death is bitter, wherefore it is said, _Prevailing death has devoured_[222]. In the New Testament sweet is the taste of life, which has swallowed up death, wherefore the Apostle says, _Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting, O grave, where is thy victory?_ Sidenote: Heb. iv. 4. Sidenote: Ib. 3. Sidenote: Ps. xcv. 8. Sidenote: Heb. xiii. 8. Sidenote: S. Luke xxiii. 43. 10. Moreover, to use the testimony of the Apostles, when God made man, _He rested from all His works on the seventh day_. But when the Jews wilfully disobeyed the commands of their God, the Lord said, _If they shall enter into My rest_. And therefore the Lord appointed another day, whereof He says, _To-day if ye will hear My voice_. For in general Scripture speaks of two days, yesterday and to-day, of which it is said, _Jesus Christ the same, yesterday to-day and for ever_. On the first day the promise is made, on the second it is fulfilled. But since on the former day neither Moses nor Joshua brought the people into their rest, Christ, to Whom the Father said, _This day have I begotten Thee_, has brought them in to-day, for by His Resurrection Jesus has obtained peace for His people. The Lord Jesus is our rest; Who says, _To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise_. For rest is in heaven, not on earth. Sidenote: Rev. xxii. 16. 11. Why then need I watch the rising and setting of the stars, at whose rising the fallows should be ploughed up and pierced by the hard plough-shares, and at whose setting the fruitful crop should be cut down by the sickle? One star suffices for me in the place of all others, _the bright and morning Star_, at Whose rising was sown the seed not of corn but of martyrs; when Rachel wept for her children, and offered in the stead of Christ her children washed in her own tears. The setting of this Star raised from the tomb not the senseless relics of the funeral pile, but the triumphant bands of the re-animated dead. 12. Let then this number seven be observed by us, seeing that the life of man passes through seven stages to old age, as Hippocrates the teacher of medicine has explained in his writings. The first age is infancy, the second boyhood, the third youth, the fourth adult age, the fifth manhood, the sixth fulness of years, the seventh old age. Thus we have the infant, the boy, the youth, the young man, the man, the elder, the aged.