Kebra Nagast

" With their lips they profess love for Me, but in their hearts they keep afar from Me, and their of Me is an empty thing." x And as Moses worshipping " saith, They have moved Me to wrath with their gods, and I will move them to jealousy with that which Isaiah saith, not a nation, for they are a people whose counsel is 2 destroyed." And those who said, " We have no Law," unto them hath the Law been given, for God is the Giver of the Law unto every one. And God rewarded the Jews according to their wickedness, and He treated the Gentiles according to their simplicity. For He is merciful and compassionate to those who call upon Him and who take refuge in Him, and who purify themselves from all uncleanness in the Church and in the Tabernacle of the Law of God ; and He loveth those who weep and repent even as Stephen, [one] of the Seventy Disciples saith. 3 Now among the Seventy Disciples there were seven who were chosen for service with the Twelve Apostles, to perform service with is Silas, and Barnabas, and Mark and Luke and Paul. And this Stephen spake unto the Jews whilst he was standing up to martyrdom and the Jews were killing him, and said unto them as he showed them their folly in not " Ye have not having kept the commandment of God, the angels, ordinance of to the the Torah according kept And it saith in the Acts [of the When they heard this they went mad with it." ye received " as Apostles], anger and gnashed their teeth." Now hearken ye unto me. In his saying " Ye have not kept the Torah according to the order of the angels," [we have] a form and a [fore] shadowing of what is in the heavens, that is to say, the heavenly and free Jerusalem, the habitation of the Most High, whereof the situation and construction are incomprehensible to mortal heart. And in it is the * 1 Isaiah xxix, 13. 2 Deuteronomy xxxii, 21, 28. 194 3 Compare Acts vi, 3 4 Acts vii, 53, 54. ; vii, 34.