Without me nothing; cornerstone uncut; Moses and Jesus on Sinai; firstfruits

Cyril: …nature. In Christ then is every fruit-bearing and every leading-toward; for he himself says, ‘Without me you are not able to do anything.’ (John 15:5) For just as we have had the leading-toward through him, so also every sacrifice is acceptable through him, of those who have received the faith. And to those who set the altar from earth he promises both arrival and blessing. ‘For I will come,’ (Exodus 25:1–9) he says, ‘toward you, and I will bless you.’ For to us who through all-wise Moses received the types of the truth, the truth itself also shone according to times—that is, Christ—through whom and in whom we have been enriched with the blessing from above and from the Father, having been sealed unto sonship in holy Spirit, and this again is finished through in Christ. ‘And if you should make an altar for me from stones,’ (1 Peter 2:6) he says, ‘you will not build them cut.’ He does not allow the stones consecrated to God to be wounded with iron. For Christ was a chosen stone, cornerstone, honored, unwounded by sins, and not knowing how to suffer the blows from the devil, not divided for God and world, and if he became flesh, yet being wholly holy, not being divided into God privately and into human specifically after the ineffable union, or the joining toward flesh, but existing one—God and human the same. For he has been divided in no way, as also the wise Paul writes.

Palladius: So then the altar from earth, and indeed also the unwounded stones, signify Christ, according to the modes already said?

Cyril: Thus I say; for the law is spiritual, according to the Scriptures. And since he was typing riddlingly the mystery of Christ and the approach through him, then already, then God was also considering to show beforehand the form of the Church. So then he was calling Moses and with him Joshua upon the mount Sinai. And understand from here that even to the holy prophets the Father is approachable through Son; for Moses and Joshua spring up with one another. For it has been written, ‘And the Lord spoke toward Moses saying: Say to the sons of Israel, and take for me firstfruits from all to whom it should seem good in the heart; you will take my firstfruits, and this is the firstfruit which you will take from them—gold and silver, bronze and hyacinth, purple and double scarlet, and twisted linen, and goat hairs, and skins of rams dyed red, and hyacinth skins, and unrotting woods, and sardius stones, and stones for the carving, for the shoulder-piece and for the foot-length robe, and you will make me a holy place, and I will appear among you. And you will make for me according to all things whatever I should show you in the mountain—the pattern of the tent, and the pattern of all its vessels; thus you will make.’ (Romans 7:14) You see how unto needing to bear fruit he urges peoples toward the profitable and most needful for constitution of Church, bringing forward cheerfully the things according to strength and resolve? For he was not seeking only gold