Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram, Vol. 11: Prolegomena (prefaces and canons)
The Manichee of old and Marcion attacked the law and the Prophets, that is, the Old Testament, as imperfect and contrary to the Gospel, and therefore delivered by another and contrary God. For they dreamed, nay blasphemed, that the good God was the author of the New Testament, an evil God of the Old; and that therefore the Prophets were to be rejected and the Apostles embraced. But these Augustine refutes fully and exactly, in the thirty-three books which he composed against Faustus, prince of the Manichees, and in the two books which he learnedly wrote against the adversary of the law and the Prophets, in which he clearly shows that the Old Testament agrees and coheres with the New in all things, as a shadow with a body; that the Old prelude to the New and won faith for it, and the New in turn explained and fulfilled the types and oracles of the Old; and so sanctioned and confirmed its faith. “For you see the Old Testament related in the New, and the New related in the Old,” says St. Augustine on Psalm 105. Again, “In the Old Testament is the concealment of the New, in the New Testament is the manifestation of the Old,” says the same Augustine, in his book On Catechizing the Uninstructed, chapter 4. Wherefore prophecy is nothing else than almost the Gospel sealed: and in turn the Gospel is nothing else than prophecy unsealed and completed through Christ.
The Prophets therefore foretold the incarnation of Christ, His nativity, life, passion, death, cross, redemption, and His whole economy, and especially the reprobation of the Synagogue of the Jews, and the succession of the Church of Christ, and the calling of the Gentiles, some six hundred, some seven hundred, some eight hundred years before. Which prediction surely convinces the Jews and all Nations, that, if they would open their eyes, they could see and ought to believe that Jesus is the Messias promised by God through the Prophets so many ages before. For the Jews, our enemies, are unconquered witnesses for us among the Gentiles, that these oracles by Christians were not forged, but were before Christ proved by them, as St. Augustine rightly argues, Tractate 35 on John.
Again, not one Isaias, or Osee foretold it, but all together and one by one spoke, and with one and the same consenting mouth, so that in nothing does one differ from another, which is surely an evident argument that one and the same Spirit of truth spoke through the mouths of each. This is what Zachary, father of St. John the Baptist, sings: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; because he hath visited and wrought the redemption of his people, and hath raised up a horn of salvation to us (namely Jesus Christ) in the house of David his servant: as he spoke by the mouth of his holy ones, who are from the beginning, his Prophets.” Then turning to his son John, as the crown of the Prophets (for St. John was the horizon of the New and Old Testament, and the end of the Old, [the beginning of the New]), he says: “And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people.”
Again, God willed, from afar and through so many ages, to show Christ to the world, and to foreshadow Him by figures and oracles, that men might conceive in mind His greatness, dignity, usefulness and necessity, and, panting after Him and His salvation, prepare themselves fittingly. “We have,” says St. Peter, epistle 2, chapter 1, verse 19, “a prophetical word more firm than the very glory and majesty of Christ, which we saw in his transfiguration: whereunto you do well to attend, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts.” For, as [St. Augustine] says, “offering to Him (Christ) service and testimony as to a lamp of the day to come, all the Prophets foreannouncing, both came before Him by being born, and afterwards clung to Him by believing. For it was fitting that He be foretold as coming, and as about to work miracles: by which miracles it would appear to those who understand well that He is not a great one to little ones, but a humble one to the proud, teaching man his littleness, that he may acknowledge himself little.” The same on Psalm 141: “He Himself (Christ) was preaching in the Prophets, since He is the Word of God; nor did they say anything of the kind unless they were full of the Word of God. They announced Christ therefore full of Christ, and those who went before Him as He was to come were those whom, as they went before, He did not forsake.”
"Marcion," says Tertullian, book 4 Against him, chapter 6, “set up that there is one Christ who in the times of Tiberius was revealed by a certain unknown God for the salvation of all nations: another who was destined by the Creator God for the restoration of the Jewish state, to come at some time. Between these he cuts a great and every difference, as great as between the just and the good, as between law and Gospel, as between Judaism and Christianity.”
Wherefore all the Prophets, as types and figures, prefigured Christ, and, describing and representing Him in themselves and in their sayings and deeds as in an image, showed Him forth; and in turn Christ was working in them, Christ was suffering in them, Christ was presenting Himself in them through a shadow to the ancient fathers to be seen and beheld. “For who else bore in Isaac the wood for himself to the sacrifice, but He who bore the cross for Himself to the passion? Who else was the ram to be immolated, caught in the thicket by its horns, but He who was fixed on the gibbet of the cross to be offered for us? Who else wrestled with the angel in Jacob, etc., but He who suffered the people of Israel to prevail against Himself, and blessed in them certain who believed? But the breadth of Jacob’s thigh limped in the multitude of the carnal people,” says St. Augustine, book 12 Against Faustus, chapter 26. And chapter 31: “Let him see,” he says, “Jesus bringing the people into the land of promise. Let him see the cluster from the land of promise hanging on a pole. Let him see in Jericho, as in this mortal world, the harlot sending a scarlet thread through the window of her house, as through the mouth of her body; which is surely a sign of blood to be confessed for the remission of sins unto salvation.” And chapter 33: “Let him see the times, first of the Judges, afterwards of the Kings, as there will be first judgment, then afterward the kingdom: and in those very times of the Judges and Kings Christ and the Church figured in many and various ways. Who was in Samson slaying the lion that met him, when he went to aliens to seek a wife, but He who, about to call the Church from the Gentiles, said: Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world? What means the honeycomb made in the mouth of the slain lion, a honeycomb built up, but that behold we see the very laws of the earthly kingdom, which before had raged against Christ, now that their fierceness is destroyed, offering even their defences to the sweetness of the Gospel that is to be preached? Who is that woman full of confidence, piercing the enemy’s temples with a stake, but the faith of the Church, destroying by the cross of Christ the kingdoms of the devil? What is the fleece rained upon on a dry threshing-floor, and afterwards the floor rained upon with the fleece dry, but first the one nation of the Hebrews having hidden in its saints the mystery of God, which is Christ, of which mystery the whole world was empty? but now in its manifestation the whole world has it, and that nation is emptied.” And a little below: “Elias is sent to be fed by a widow of strangers, who was gathering two sticks before she died: not here by the name of wood alone, but also by the number of the sticks is the sign of the cross expressed. Her meal and oil are blessed, the fruit and cheerfulness of charity, which when spent does not fail. For God loveth a cheerful giver.”
And chapter 35: “Eliseus: the boys mocking and crying: Go up, thou bald head, go up, thou bald head: laughing with childish folly at Christ crucified in the place of Calvary, seized by demons they perish. Eliseus sends by his servant his staff upon the dead man, and he lives not again: he himself comes, joins and fits himself to the dead man, and he revives: the Word of God sent the law by His servant, nor did it profit the human race dead in sins: He Himself came, conformed Himself to us, made partaker of our death, and we are quickened.” This and more St. Augustine. Wherefore “the Prophets were sowers, the Apostles reapers,” says Chrysostom, homily 34 on John 4, nay Christ Himself, John 4:38. Clement of Alexandria, book 6 of the Stromata, testifies that St. Peter in his sermons professed that he had gone through the prophecies, and from them had learned Christ’s birth, death, cross, resurrection, ascension; and through them had believed in God and Christ: and that therefore he taught and preached nothing without Scripture. Hence again St. Peter, epistle 1, chapter 1, verse 10, says that the Prophets inquired and searched diligently concerning this salvation. And St. John, Apocalypse 19:10: “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” Wherefore these testimonies of the prophets concerning Christ were collected by St. Cyprian to Quirinus; by Prosper, in his book On the Promises and Predictions; by Galatinus, Finus, Joseph Acosta, in his book On Christ Revealed; and from them they convince the Jews. Lactantius says excellently, book 4 of the Institutes: “Christ is not therefore believed by us to be God because He did wonders, but because we have seen all things done in Him which were announced to us by the prediction of the Prophets, etc. Let us therefore acknowledge the fruit of prophecy, and not neglect so great a part of the Christian profession.” And St. Ignatius, in his epistle to the Philadelphians, writes that he would not believe the Gospel unless he saw it foretold in the ancients. Finally, of Christ St. Peter says, Acts 10:43: “To him all the prophets give testimony, that through his name all receive remission of sins who believe in him.””